World of Broken Dreams
by SimpleTechnicality
Summary: In which Kanaya Maryam's life is turned upside down, and she tries to keep herself and the people she calls her friends together while dealing with the discovery that she is apparently the "Chosen Undead", which as far as she can tell means she gets to be a pawn for gods, dragons, and an infuriatingly charming witch. Main pairing is Rose/Kan, but will contain several others.
1. Mine is Just Another Scene

**ST: I don't own Homestuck. Don't own Dark Souls either.**

**Mine Is Just Another Scene In This World of Broken Dreams**

Her name is Kanaya Maryam and she happy with her life so far. She is the daughter of a well-known seamstress and a wealthy and respected merchant, or as respected as a merchant can get in the strict theocracy of Thorolund. She is just over eighteen years old, and will soon start assisting her mother in earnest, actually making cloth and designs rather than just preforming busy work and arranging contacts with buyers. In her free time she enjoys sewing her own clothes and tending to her large collections of exotic potted flora. She's very fond of plants, and would probably have some sort of garden had she not been born in the middle of a vast city. Her desire to keep her plants alive led her to learn a small spell from a talented acquaintance that made plant life resistant to all manner of pollution.

She is enamored with magic really, but would never dare reveal that. Sorcery was forbidden in Thorolund, and to express an interest in such heretic crafts would be suicidal. So instead she spends a great deal of time every night reading by candlelight, losing herself in a world of magic and wonder. She is especially fond of tales of dashing, roguish pyromancers and their torrid affairs with Astoran noblewomen. Pyromancy itself appealed to her not only because of the life of excitement and danger it entailed but also because of its philosophical and religious connections to balance and nature, something sorcery lacked. She read several biographies about a particular sorceress however, a prodigy from Vinheim named Vriska Serket who during her time was hailed as one of the greatest sorcerers of all time despite being the same age as Kanaya. Vriska Serket may have been a sorcerer but lived the fast and dangerous life of a pyromancer and her exploits were fodder for countless tales. When she was younger Kanaya dreamed of growing up to be just like her, only without the part about turning undead and being locked away up north.

She grew out of that though, and instead began to have a different dream for her future. She developed her mother's nurturing streak, and was happiest when she could help one of her friends work through one of their many problems and issues. Yes help, not meddle, she does not meddle _God Damnit_. But it always saddens her when she looks down an alleyway and sees abandoned children either begging for food or money or just lying there, still. There was only so much she could do for them, and she hated it. So one day she planned to use the money she made selling her clothing to open an orphanage, and to help those poor children as much as she could.

But that dream, as well as every other hope and aspiration she ever had, went right down the drain when she woke up one morning with a strange, hollow feeling in the palm of her hand. Her eyes widened when she looked down and saw the darksign on her hand. She had secretly thought it was an attractive design when she saw it in pictures in books, but actually seeing it there on her hand made her realize just how ugly and disfiguring it truly was. For about two seconds she was completely numb, empty of all thought and feeling. And then she shrieked.

She panicked and instead of wrapping her hand and hiding the mark away ran straight to her mother, shaking and crying and scared. Because growing up was hard, but not nearly as hard as realizing you may never get the chance.

Her mother held her, cried with her, and promised her that she and her father would keep their little girl safe no matter what. A promise made in vain, seeing how nearly half the servants had seen the sign on Kanaya's hand when she ran down the hall.

~)

"Sir, we have received reports of strange noises and odors emanating from your house. We have come to do a search to ensure that you are not harboring undead."

The pair of knights, soldiers of the Allfather, would have simply forced their way into any other merchant owned house, grabbed the undead, and left. No mere merchant had any right to stand in the way of the servants of the gods. Merchants, really, were ultimately just heretics who had found a way to make themselves tangentially useful and therefore were to be tangentially tolerated, as far as the knights were concerned.

"How dare you come to my house and make such accusations! I demand that you leave immediately!"

Any other merchant but this one. The Maryam clan was being observed by his Grand Highness himself, and while it made little sense that storming in to claim an undead would arouse his Highness's wrath, no one was going to take the chance. Madness was common among those closest to the light of the Allfather and it was best to be as cautious as possible whenever a high ranked church official might be involved. And the merchant knew this and intended to use it to his advantage, though it would not save his daughter. The undead must be removed, no matter the cost.

"Sir, you will move or be moved."

In the end the two knights gained entrance into the house, sinfully large for such heathens, and instead of immediately crippling and carrying away the girl merely led her roped and bound out of the house, the eyes of the servants boring holes in her back.

The mother cried and tried in vain to keep the knights from her daughter. The father shouted and made threats. The knight's instinct was to kill both of them, as interference with an undead apprehension is a sure sign of a heretic. But they feared the capricious nature of the Grand Highness and merely struck them to the ground. The mother would lose some teeth and the father's nose would be misshapen once it healed, and that would have to do.

The undead was strangely quiet throughout all this, eyes vacant and tearstained. Only her hand had become decomposed, and if you covered that up she could pass as a perfectly ordinary human. One of the knights found this disconcerting, though he would never admit it. It was easy to distance himself from the undead when they resembled corpses and attacked the living indiscriminately. But this girl was just barely past eighteen at most and clearly had yet to lose her sanity to the curse. He thought she would surely perish during the trek to the northern asylum, and then mentally chastised himself once he realized he'd been thinking of her as human. She was an undead and couldn't die if she wanted to, the poor creature.

~)~)

Kanaya was not at all happy with her life at that moment. She had been shackled to the side of a wooden carriage for nearly a month now. Her shame at being naked had faded once her body had finished dying out, her wrinkled and cracked skin turning a shade of dark brown. She'd started to bleed from where the ropes dug into her, but even that stopped as the curse spread throughout her body, her blood becoming thick and slow, merely welling up around the ropes before drying up.

She was one of only two sane hollows strapped to that particular carriage, and she was thankful for her companion, however unpleasant he might be. Without him she would have surely gone insane by now, driven mad with despair and loneliness. And hunger, a lot of hunger. Actually, she's pretty sure she might've died from starvation a few days ago. Or dehydration. Or maybe a piece of her brain rotted off. She really didn't want to think about it too much.

In an effort to make herself not think about it, she turned to her companion and attempted to restart their previous conversation.

"So it occurs to me that..."

"Oh for fuck sake, why can't you just stare off into space like the rest of these fuckwits and let me rot in peace! I…"

His rant was cut off by some painful sounding coughs. Kanaya got the feeling that were it not for his throat having the texture of sandpaper he would probably be shouting every word. As it was, his penchant for long winded speeches was causing him great pain. She felt bad for goading him into conversation, but prying into his thoughts and trying to help him sort out his shit was he all she had to take her mind off things. And she desperately need to take her mind off things.

"I wish you would be more careful."

_Pause_

"You know very well what happens when."

_Pause_

"You speak too much at once."

"Fuck…you"

"It merely occured to me that...I haven't asked for your name."

"…Karkat Vantas."

"Thorolund or Carim?"

"Carim, and since your...clearly from fucking Thorolund...i'm going to assume your about to say something...bigoted and derogative and i just...want you to know that you can...fuck right the hell off with that shit."

"Please slow down…and I've no ill will towards…carim or it's people. I was just curious."

"Yeah well curiosity's got no place…where we're headed. You best enjoy…this fuckin pleasure cruise while it lasts because…this is the last time you're ever going to get to…see anything but stone walls, metal bars, and hollows."

"How is it you came to know…so much about our destination?"

"…the knight I was apprenticed under…went hollow a few years ago. I did my…research. Curi-fucking-osity."

"Maybe you will see him again?"

He turned his head and looked at her for the first time in the trip. His skin was much paler than hers, his black empty eyes sunken into his skull giving him a strange, melancholic look. He stared into her own eyes, no doubt changed beyond recognition by now, for a few seconds before turning his head back and continuing his staring contest with the ground. She assumed she'd gotten all she would get from him, which was just as well since she could feel another bout of strange, unexplained unconsciousness coming on. Just as her eyes started to shut, she heard him mumble something.

"I fucking hope not."

~)~)~)

When she came to, they had entered a large, snowy valley. On the peak of a distant mountain was an expansive stone structure.

"What is that?" she asked, more to herself than to anyone else. Great, now she was talking to herself, that couldn't be a good sign. Karkat must have heard her though, because after a few seconds he replied bitterly.

"That gigantic fucking stone shit-hole…is where you and I are going to spend the…rest of our lives, which in case you forgot…is forever. Are you looking forward to it as much as I am?"


	2. If I Should Take a Notion

**ST: Most relevant nuances of my interpretation of the Dark Souls world should be explained in the story, but if you need clarification on anything feel free to either leave your question in a review or PM me.**

**If I Should Take a Notion to go Jump in the Ocean**

**(well it ain't nobody's business if I do)**

When Dave Strider first saw the Darksign on his left shoulder, he neither shrieked nor panicked. If there had been anyone in the room with him at the time he wouldn't have shown any reaction at all, and would instead have immediately reported to whichever captain was on duty, relinquished his sword, and petitioned to be sent on an Undead Mission. He was all alone in the room however, so he allowed himself a small, ironically enigmatic smile before heading off to find the captain. He'd been waiting for this for two years. It was time to go find his brother.

The very same day that Dave was knighted, his brother Dirk turned undead. In Astora, a knight who became undead could petition to be sent on an Undead Mission, which essentially just meant you got to walk up north rather than get strapped to the side of a carriage. They'd hand you some shitty armor and a shitty sword and send you off, feeling all self-righteous about their 'humane' treatment of the 'afflicted.' Dirk was given his mission, some esoteric bullshit about bells and asylums, and was sent up north. It was nearly a week before anyone noticed that he'd left the shitty sword they'd given him behind in his armory, most of which had been cleaned out, and made off instead with a powerful blessed sword, an artifact stolen from Thorolund during the last Great War. It was no secret that whoever went undead next would be sent off to avenge the honor of the Astoran court by killing Dirk Strider.

~)

Dave appreciated being an Astoran. When he'd served as Dirk's page his brother had been sure to send him on tedious fucking fetch missions all over the continent, making him travel from Carim to Thorolund to the Great Swamp itself. Dave assumed he was being given such shit jobs in order to let him get familiar with different places and cultures, and also because Dirk is kind of a dick. It wasn't until after Dirk went north that he realized he was being sent off to the ass ends of the world to show him how lucky he was that he was born an Astoran.

Someone as rebellious as Dave would have been put to death in Thorolund, killed in some sort of overcomplicated court intrigue in Carim, or used as a lab rat for a half mad sorcerer in Vinheim. He supposed he would have done well enough in the Five-Finger Delta, though spending his whole life as a farmer would've sucked ass. And as cool as Pyromancy was he didn't much care for a lifestyle that got you dead by age thirty. And Catarina, as fine as them bitches be and as sweet as the mead is, is a nice place to visit but not somewhere he'd want to live.

Astora was the second oldest city on the continent. It was there when refugees from Thorolund broke off to form Carim, and was still going strong when the kingdoms of Balder and Bernike fell to the curse of the undead. In Astora Dave's swordsmanship put him on the fast track to knighthood, and his rebellious nature was overlooked in favor of his protective instincts, a valued quality in a knight of Astora. Had he not gone to that witch living underneath Carim, not had her drain enough of his humanity to make him more susceptible to being afflicted with the Darksign, he would have likely taken his brothers position as the head captain.

~)~)

He arrived in Carim by carriage one month after his brother went North. The sun was shining, which was rare for Carim's rainy climate. The light did little to make the city seem less forbidding though; gray stone buildings, soldiers in gray steel armor, rats, puddles, and strange rustling noises down every alley, the whole nine yards cause when a city chooses a theme by god they stick with it, even if that theme is being creepy as fuck.

The people in Carim left their houses to go work in the mines or a noble's house, and that was about it. The only place you were likely to find anyone out on the street would be the marketplace, somewhere Dave knew to avoid. The only people who went to the marketplace in Carim were armed merchants and nobles accompanied by knights. It was a popular locale for assassinating political rivals.

Dave's business would take him into the cellar in an abandoned house, into a haphazardly dug tunnel leading into the sewers beneath the city. The sewers beneath Carim were filled with everything from poor and homeless beggars to safe houses for assassins and heretics. Dave wouldn't be surprised if in a few years refugees from the hamlets formed their own sub city beneath the city proper.

Dave learned early on that so long as you keep your nose to the ground and your mouth shut, you'll be plenty safe down below. Heretics, pyromancers, assassins, all of them needed a stopping point between the eastern cities of Astora and Thorolund with western Catarina and the Great Swamp. Anywhere else and the various criminal groups and factions would be vying for control, but any power grabs here would lead to half the continent being cut off from the other, so the sewers beneath Carim had in effect between the one and only cease fire zone on the whole continent.

He'd always heard that there was a witch living beneath Carim, and never once doubted it. When you think about it, it'd be more far-fetched to say that a witch didn't live in the isolated and expansive tunnels beneath a city famed for being shit-hive maggots. The question was, what kind of witch are we dealing with here?

Some people claimed she was just some old woman who ate rats and gave anyone who came within twenty feet a fierce case of dick fungus. Others claimed she was the last living member of the famous Lalonde clan, an ancient hag who as a young girl escaped the massive purge that sent her family up north. And others still claimed she was some sort of primordial pyromancers who could manipulate life itself.

Dave's met several witches in his time, and usually they're just chicks with magic that either lost their families to the Darksign or were born into a city with a strong anti-magic ruler. They could be real helpful if you're on their good side, 'specially the ones who live out near the swamp. Nothings a sweeter sight late at night in the swamps than the glow of a cabin with a sweet old woman inside who will give that nice Dirk Striders younger brother a place to stay in exchange for a little mushroom gathering, and who can blow the head of whatever's chasing him with a stick that shoots glowing blue death. It's important for him to remember though that years of living in total isolation make most quick to temper. Dave's never heard of a dick fungus spell, or of dick fungus at all for that matter, but he was carrying a few potions and a purging stone on him anyway. Just in case.

~)~)~)

"Kay, um, you shur you wanna do this? Most peple want, you know,the exact opposite."

" God damn yes, for the last time woman I'm sure, just, get it over with already will you?"

"Allright, well, holsh still and keep them peepers shut."

He wasn't all that concerned about having his humanity drained, his contacts told him that the few people capable of it did it fairly easily. What worried him was the fact that this little girl, and she was a little girl, probably two or three years younger than him, was drunk off her ass. And she was about to put her hand in his soul, or whatever. While drunk. And he was gonna let her. This is what it's come to.

" Kay, now serisly don't open you r eyes."

"Damn woman, yes I got it just…"

He was cut off by a strange pinkish glow filtering in through his eyelids and an unpleasant, light headed feeling. His first instinct was to immediately pull away and get the fuck out. He was a Strider though and a Strider knows how to keep his cool.

And keep his cool he did, right up until he passed the fuck out.

~)~)~)~)

Waking up groggy and disoriented is not that unusual for Dave Strider. Waking up groggy and disoriented because he's just had a chunk of his humanity drained out with dark magic by a drunk teenage girl living in the sewers, however, is new.

"God damn, the fuck happened?"

He heard the girl shift around, sitting outside his field of vision, before responding.

" Yeah, it's a side effect of the spell. Ah aint actully a dark sorc'r or nothing, so I can't control the side effects of it too well. Knocking peeple out bein one a them side effects."

" Huh, guess that'd be pretty useful for a dark sorcerer though right? How long until I can move my legs?"

" Oops,shory, fogots bout that one. Shoud be bout a half hour tops."

"Nah, it's cool. So, mind if I ask how the hell you got your hands on the most feared spell in all the land without becoming a black magic wielding psycho."

" Well ther'ry actually called Darkwraiths. My mom could commune with their gods, though she didn't ofen. My little sister on the other hands was all up in all that creepy dark worm god bullshit. Mom went undeash an ran offs with my sister, who gave mey the Dark Hand before she left. That's what I used to drain your humanity."

Dave was beginning to feel just a little awkward. Here he was, miles underground in the sewer system of what is hands down the creepiest damn city this side of the mortal plane, body numb from the waist down, listening to a completely shitfaced witch tell him her life story.

Well, fuck. It's not like he has anything better to do.

"My bro went undead and ran off too. That's why I came here, so can go north and find him."

"You two must have been very close for you to wanna go undead for him."

"Yeah, funny thing is we really weren't. I mean yeah I appreciate him for taking me in as his page and teaching me how to fend for myself, but that's all our relationship ever really was. Now that I've been knighted I really don't need him at all anymore."

"But, then, I mean, why do all this? Why throw yoush whole life away to go after him?"

"Honestly, and believe me I know how fucking stupid this sounds, I just feel like I'm supposed to."

"That doesn't sound shtupid at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure I know exacktly what you mean. I felt the same way about coming to Careem and setting up shop down here."

She gave him a sad, tired smile before patting his leg, at which point he realized that feeling had more or less returned to his lower body. About damn time.

"You should probably get moving, you've no doubt got a lot of work to do if your going to be traveling all the way to the Asylum."

~)~)~)~)~)

They locked Dave up in one of the tower rooms for his last night in Astora. They'd spend tonight getting all the paperwork ready, notifying kin and close friends for him, and in the morning would present him with the same shitty armor and shitty iron straight sword he'd used when he was a page and kick him out of the city. Or at least that was what they thought would happen. In reality they'd come in tomorrow morning only to find an empty room. Not much later than that they would discover that a suit of elite armor had been stolen, along with the surcoat marked with the Strider crest that had been made for Dave when he'd been officially made a knight. And even later than that someone on a tour of the royal vault would notice that the most potent and treasured shield in the entire Astoran court had disappeared.

In truth Dave could have done all that the night before and avoided giving the captains a long list of fake friends and relatives to sort through. But he had intended to send a letter to the only real friend he had, to let him know that he'd be gone and not to bother writing to him anymore.

He'd never actually met John Egbert, a citizen of Zena, an ancient city that no one could ever seem to point out on a map, despite the fact that everyone has heard of it at some point or another. He'd sent the poor fool some letters to give to his sister on Dirks behalf. John sent him a thank you, along with some dorkish, snide comments. Dave sent another, full of ironic sarcasm and badass slam poems. And then john sent another, and Dave followed suit, back and forth until eventually Dave formed a bond with this boy he'd never met that felt like what Dave always imagined real brotherhood was, though he always seemed to shorten brother down to bro whenever he referred to john. Weird.

It was with no small amount of regret that he had to leave his best friend like this, and he had every intention of spending whatever time he had that last night not devoted to larceny writing the most un- ironic goodbye in history. He hadn't expected john to write him his own farewell letter, along with some of the weirdest shit he'd ever heard.

_Hey Dave! Wow, I guess this is it huh? The last letter I'll ever get to write to you! Man, it really sucks though, in just another year I would've been old enough to go traveling like my father. We could have met each other face to face finally! _

_Well I guess we'll still get too eventually, but not until we both reach Lordran and who knows how long that could be? And even then, that's only according to what you've told me, and we both the likelihood of you abusing your powers for the sake of ironic shenanigans is pretty high!_

_Anyway, I guess all I really want to say is that I'm really gonna miss talking with you and that I can't wait to actually meet up. See you soon I hope!_

_John Egbert_

"The fuck?"


	3. Coming Out Hard pt1

**Coming Out Hard**

**Part 1**

Karkat could not fucking believe his luck. Well, actually, he could, everything seems to be going the same way it always does for him, but gods be damned if he wasn't going to complain about this shit all the same, even if he has to do it in his head for fear of coughing out pieces of his throat.

He and that Thorolund bitch, Kanya or whatever her name was, somehow ended up being placed in what was as far as Karkat could tell was the only intact cell in the whole damn asylum. At least if he'd been placed in one of the shit cells with holes in the wall or bars rusted off he could've spent his eternity going insane with a little breathing room. Instead he's stuck with some nosy wench in a small stone room with intact walls and bars just strong enough that his emaciated arms can't break them down.

It's only been a few hours since the soldiers left and the atmosphere's gone from awkwardly silent to soul crushingly depressing. At least she was someone to talk to and, though he'd never say this out loud, she really didn't seem like all that bad a girl. But now all she's doing is sitting against the wall and staring at the floor which, to be fair, is about the same thing that he's doing. There's something about sitting in the room your likely to spend the rest of your coherent life in that just kills your motivation to do anything but breathe and blink occasionally.

It was far from quiet, the sounds of mice shuffling around combined with the flickering of the torches the soldiers lit and the faint moaning of the hollows throughout the building, along with a strange breathing sound reminiscent of snoring, became surprisingly loud due to the lack of anything else. And the surprise Karkat felt when he heard the grating on the ceiling above them break open and drop down a fucking corpse is the only reason why Karkat shot up off the ground and screamed. He was not frightened damnit! He was just startled!

He holds his not at all girly scream for about two seconds before he's doubled over in pain, coughing out dry clops of black, dry blood and beating his fist against the wall in anger and frustration. By the time he recovers he sees that his cellmate is staring at him with an incredulous look. "Did you just…"

"No damnit, I just sat here calmly…while fucking corpses rained…down from the heavens. And by rained from the heavens I mean…shit out the ass of whatever diety actually lives up there…because apparently shitting on me is…all they have to do these days.

"No need to get so worked up. Fear is after all probably…a good thing given our current state…of being."

"I was not scared fuck you and die!"

Karkat proceeded to give her the most withering stare he could manage, which wasn't much considering that his decomposed face wasn't capable of many expressions. Kanaya however ignored her cellmate's oblivious wrath in favor of rummaging around the pockets of the grey shift the corpse was wearing.

Karkat looked up to observe the grate it fell through, which he could immediately tell was too high up to climb out. "okay, so now we've got a hole in the…roof that we can't use to…get out but every flesh hungry hollow here can use to…get in. Great. Okay Kanya, from now on we sleep, or space out,or…starve or whatever it is we keep doing, in shifts. Soneone has eyes on the hole at all times."

"I do not believe…that will be necessary."

Karkat looks back down towards her to tell her that yes, it is very fucking necessary unless she would like to go ahead and cut her own head off with a sharp stone, but is stopped when he sees her kneeling down next to the corpse holding up a key and smiling.

"No way. There is no way in hell…that of all the hollows here…the one that falls through the roof is the one…with the fucking key to our cell."

"Well there is only one way…to find out."

Kanaya got up and slid the key into the lock. She hesitated for a moment, nervous, and then slowly turned the key until there was a loud click and the gate slid forward.

"…No"

Kanaya turned to him, her relieved smile shifting into a look of confusion. "What do you mean no?"

"…I mean no. As in no...the universe is not kind…enough to do anything other than…fuck with us and that if we…leave this room we're just asking…for it to make us suffer more. And besides that changes nothing, we're still…trapped on the peak of a mountain in the middle of a…fucking frozen wasteland."

"Well at the very least I intend on familiarizing myself with my new home. Perhaps we will find something more comfortable than stone floors to sit on. And no matter what happens I am certain that staying here will only lead us to lose our minds sooner. And my name Is Kanaya, not Kanya."

And with that she walked out into the corridor, confident that Karkat was going to be right on her heels in ten seconds.

~)

Karkat was right on her heels in five seconds, in full gripe mode but happy to be moving his legs.

He walked quickly to catch up to Kanaya, who'd stopped to look through a set of bars a few feet down the corridor. As he got closer he realized that she was looking out into a sort of underground courtyard below and between their corridor and another along the opposite end, and that she had the weirdest, dumbfuck expression on her face. "The fuck are you…"

The holds up her hand to shut him up, then slowly points down into the courtyard towards what Karkat had initially overlooked as a large pile of stones. "…Holy shit."

So that's what that snoring sound was.

"I would like to put forth the motion that we avoid any descending staircases and that we never return to this hallway which as far as I can tell is ninety percent rusted iron bars."

"Yeah, that sounds good to me."

~)~)

Dave Strider was seriously regretting his decision to steal a shield rather than a sword. Now don't get him wrong, the Crest Shield was, in addition to being completely badass, heavily enchanted and had saved his ass from axe-wielding bandits more than once on the way up north. It's just that once he reached the asylum itself he'd had to resort to using it as his primary weapon.

When Dirk Strider left he'd taken with him fifteen of his favorite curved blades, reportedly obtained from some mysterious expedition he took to another continent to the east, and a shit ton of repair powders. The foreign blades were incredibly sharp but very brittle and required constant maintenance. Dirk had been thoroughly trained with the blades during his time spent east, and he'd passed most of that training on to Dave, which is why Dave brought one too. Just one. And two small bags of repair powder.

When he finally scaled the great mountain and reached the northern undead asylum three fourths of his blade had broken off. He'd still ended several bandits with the broken blade, but he quickly realized that it would be next to useless against the hollows of the asylum.

At first he thought he could do the same thing he did with the bandits, induce several heavily bleeding cuts with what was left of the sword and just circle around them until they succumb to blood-loss. But when you engage a hollow in the asylum you've got about five minutes before you're surrounded by ten of the bastards. And while his stolen armor and shield would protect him from the blunt and broken blades the hollows wielded Dave knew that if he was swarmed by enough hollows they could simply pry the shield and armor off of him.

By the time he'd managed to kill his first hollow he had attracted several dozens of the angry bastards and immediately made a tactical decision to get his ass out of there. He ran up an outdoors staircase onto what seemed to be some sort of ceiling for the lower cells, the upper areas of the asylum forming a wall on one end of the platform. There were several openings which he guessed dropped down into the cells themselves, openings which Dave bet the hollows were too stupid to avoid.

He dashed to the other end of the roof as quickly as the armor would allow and turned to watch his pursuers drop down into the holes. By the time a hollow reached him over half their number had fallen into the cells below.

The hollow jumped at him with more force than he could stop with his broken sword. He knew that though the hollow wouldn't breach his armor the force of it slamming into him would knock him over the edge of the roof. Any other knight would have attempted to roll out of the way, but Dave was a Strider, and Striders stand their ground. He put all his weight into one ferocious back-hand with his shield arm, hitting the hollow mid-air and knocking it to the ground. Other hollows that were lucky enough to avoid falling down one of the openings were closing in though, and the hollow he'd knocked down was trying to get back on its feet.

He kicked the struggling hollow in the head, knocking it back to the ground and caving in a section of its skull. He looked around frantically but couldn't see anyway out that didn't involve getting chewed on or breaking his legs. Luckily, he happened to notice that the sharp tip of his shield had left a fairly deep cut in the face of the hollow he'd just bitch slapped…

~)~)~)

Kanaya wasn't sure what she would find when she and her grumpy companion managed to ascend the staircase and ladders of the lower section of the undead asylum and reach the open skies of an aboveground courtyard. She supposed if she had to venture a guess it would have been a bunch of hollows shifting around aimlessly and whose heads would need to be carefully and swiftly removed with the reasonably sharp piece of broken sword Karkat found and wrapped cloth around. She was surely not expecting to see an Astoran knight stepping back and forth wildly around a small fire, beating down hollows with his shield.

He seemed to be missing a good deal of his armor. One arm was protected by nothing by a leather glove and it appeared he had no cuirass any kind of sizable chestplate, judging by the way his surcoat hugged his frame when he turned. What armor he did have however was absolutley beautiful;the same finely crafted armor one would expect to see on an Astoran knight captain pursuing a roguish pryomancer caught in bed with a noble's wife. His shield was finely crafted as well and was painted in a way reminiscent of one of the famous enchanted blue shields of the Astoran royal family. And his sword was…well…it appeared he didn't have a sword. On closer inspection while the knight was relatively still, trying to angle the pointed tip of the shield to pierce a hollows skull, Kanaya noted that while he didn't have a sword he did seem to have some sort of curved dagger on his belt.

Her analysis of the knight was interrupted by the sound of Karkat's pained, raspy voice filtering in from below as he began making his way up the ladder behind her.

"Holy fuck that bastard…bled a lot. I mean not really a lot for…a normal person but for a walking corpse…with viens full of dry fetid blood that was a lot of…holy fuck whats this asshole's problem?"

"Karkat please show some decorum, this 'asshole' is clearly a high ranked knight of Astora on an Undead Mission of great importance."

"Yeah like a give whatever...shits still in my undead intestines about some...asshole knight or any bullshit mission. I mean really, your fucking shield? And what the hell is up...with that dagger, why does it have such a flat tip? Im from fucking...Carim damn it, I know my fucking daggers and that...is a god awful design for a dagger."

"Karkat...while I would normally like to scold you for...showing such disrespect for such an...honorable and chivalrous figure I'd like to point out...that he's almost done killing those hollows and...dagger or no dagger we should probably make it clear...we have no intention of attacking him."

"Disrespect!? Im a damn knight...too you flighty broad and you...haven't shown me one ounce of respect yet! and you really...Think that asshole is going to give a fuck whether we attack him...first or not? What we ought...to do is turn our asses around…oh. Uh, hey.

"Greetings, sir knight."

"…Sup."

**ST: Much appreciation for my mysterious guest reviewer. Glad to know you're enjoying it.**


	4. Coming Out Hard pt2

**Coming Out Hard**

**Part 2**

"…sup."

~)

"Okay, what the fuck! Are you seriously telling me everything just grew back!?"

"Yes damn it, I sat down by the flaming sword and it all grew back, skin, blood, dong, the works. Now cut this horseshit out and stop asking me that same question over and over again."

"Everything!? Really!?"

Seriously, this little dude needed to calm the hell down. When Dave approached the two naked hollows (why the fuck were they even naked, the other ones were at least wearing sacks) arguing with each other he was prepared for anything from a coordinated assault from two directions to them begging him to end their miserable lives. He was not expecting the short one to accost him over the miraculous regrowth of his nads and the tall one to stand by looking like he'd kill to get a word in edge wise. Or was it a she? He honestly couldn't tell.

"Please, pardon my companions ill manners, but did I hear you right, sir? Did this sword imbedded within a small fire somehow rid you of the curse?"

Dave turned away from the glaring midget to look over towards the other hollow, which judging by the voice was very likely female. "First of all don't call me sir, that's only sexy when you've got discernible sex organs. Second no it didn't remove the Darksign it just restored my body."

Oh, um, well I suppose that is disappointing but at the same time still quite exciting. I believe I will have to try out this magical fire myself. Will you join me Karkat?"

"Hell yes, just give me a second."

The tall one looked over towards the one named Karkat, who was rummaging around one of the mad hollows Dave recently killed. The ridiculous sounding six letter name told him he was either from Thorolund or Carim.

Karkat stood and kicked the body, his foot ringing out against metal loudly enough to make all the non-Striders present wince.

"Ow, gods damn this thing, just open already!"

Probably Thorolund; kid just didn't seem slick enough to be from Carim.

"Karkat what in the world are you even doing?"

"Well fucking excuse me for not wanting to walk around bare ass naked in the freezing cold with my newly restored body in front of a couple of strangers. The fuck do you think im doing woman, im getting us some clothes."

After a few mumbled curses Karkat managed to pull off the dead hollow something Dave assumed had at one point been a pair of greaves and a waistcloth, as well as several strips of cloth from the tattered remains of its shirt. He tied the strips of cloth together to make a loincloth for himself and tossed the waistcloth and a leftover strip of cloth to his friend. She held it up, looked at it for a second, and then let it fall to the ground.

"Hey, do you have any idea how hard it was to undo those things without breaking something?! The fuck are you just throwing it down for!?"

"Don't get me wrong Karkat I greatly appreciate the thought. But I can do better."

She then proceeded to scavenge essentially the exact same getup Karkat had in mind, only in color; faintly, and very faded, red for the waistcloth and what was probably green a hundred years ago for the makeshift bra.

The pair headed over to the fire and sat down, followed by Dave who was trying not to show how much he was looking forward to having some actual human interaction that didn't involve killing bandits.

"So, now that everyone's good ready to chill by the flaming sword that we're all apparently not going to question, dressed and modest as can be, how about introductions?"

"Ah, my apologies, my name is Kanaya Maryam, of Thorolund, and this is Karkat Vantas of Carim."

"Thats knight Vantas of Carim you flightly broad."

"Dave Strider, knight of ill jams and badassery and also Astora."

"Bullshit, I bet you just stole that armor from some dead asshole on the way here."

"Karkat while I admit that our friend does not exactly display the qualities one would expect to find in an Astoran knight I want to point out that not only do you exhibit none of the qualities oF a knight of carim you just said all of that without pausing or hacking up globs of disgusting black liquid."

"Hey girl, not cool. I am like the fucking poster boy of knighthood over here."

"Fuck you Maryam. And you have this knight act down perfectly Strider, right up until you open that gutter you call a mouth and spew out those shameful, rotting, festeringconglomerations of words you dare to call sentences. And shut the fuck up Kanaya I don't want to hear one word about how hypocritical that sounds coming from me I am fully fucking aware of that I saw your eyebrows raise in that snooty manner like you think that you about to correct my shit and holy fuck you have eyebrows now hell yes. I'm just so damned relieved to be able to speak like a normal fucking human being and I can not even fucking tell you how much I am looking forward to my first heartneat in what feels like years."

"…Holy shit you need to quiet the hell down."

"Indeed Karkat that may have been a bit too verbose even for you. I think perhaps you should practice breathing if you intend on speaking in that manner after your lungs have reformed."

"Fuck both of you, fuck you Kanaya for saying that out of genuine concern and fuck Strider on principle for being a knight impersonating little shit.."

"Motherfucker I am so a knight."

"So you didn't steal that armor?"

"…Okay, yeah, technically I did steal the armor but…"

"And that shield you painted to look like one of the blue shields?"

"Hey, this is the legit crest shield you asshole."

"And what the ever loving fuck is that thing on your waist?"

"Okay, see, it used to be a sword, but it broke on the way over here."

"Bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit! You expect me to believe that a knight of fucking Astora ranked high enough to get his family crest on his surcoat is going to travel all the way here to the nothern mountains without bringing repair powder?"

Dave was prepared to launch into a retort about his knightly fist in Karkat's rotting face but Kanaya suddenly leaned in towards them and cut him off. "I'm sure we can find better things to discuss than the validity of your respective claims to knighthood. Like why the fire emanating from this sword continues to burn despite a notable lack of any flammable material. Or why our humanification, which I know is not a real word but what the hell else can we call it, seems to have ground to a halt. And finally, what exactly we intend to do. I assume you came here for a reason Dave Strider and Karkat and I would gladly assist you…"

"Like hell I would!"

"…Especially considering it's pretty much that or sit here staring at walls."

"I'm looking for an undead thief, goes by the name Dirk."

"Well good luck identifying him among the bodies you've strewn all over the place."

"He's not a hollow, or at least not a mad one. He's an undead knight who stole a blessed sword from the royal vaults and ran off, so I'd know if I fought him here."

"Well if he isn't hollow, and he isn't adhering to some suicidal cocksuckers esoteric death quest, then why the fuck would he have come here of all places? "

"Hell if I know. Found one of his weird ass swords embedded in the mountain when I was climbing up here though, so he's definitely here somewhere."

"Well, Karkat and I explored the lower cells extensively so I can assure you he isn't there."

" Fuck, that's about the only place I haven't looked. I guess maybe he already left? Shit man, I am not looking forward to going back down this mountain at all."

" What about the door over there?"

"What…oh, you mean those big fucking doors not ten feet away, yeah in case you didn't notice their kinda fucking big. Why would I even attempt to open that bastard its atleast five times my height and made of metal."

"Well, prehaps…"

"Motherfucker!"

Dave and Kanaya both turned around in time to catch Karkat shoot up off the ground and direct a furious kick towards the fire.

"She's right gods damn it, we stopped healing! All this piece of shit did was make us into a pair of slightly better preserved corpses!"

"Karkat, while it is disappointing that we aren't fully restored we can at the very least speak normally again. And i'd also like to point out that you seem to have regained your muscles. I was about to suggest that prehaps the three of us, though mostly you and Dave, could force open this door."

Dave took a second look and the slightly revitalized Karkat and saw that the shouty little bastard did indeed have muscles. Actually, now that Dave looked, he saw that the guy was almost all muscle, lean and sharp, the telltale sign of someone who fights regularly and eats rarely.

"Huh, Maryam you might be onto something here."

~)~)

"Alright, on three we push."

"On three, or right after three?"

"Gods damn it Strider."

"Hey that's a legitimate question. You're not being very specific here."

"Oh fuck you, just push the damn door!"

Despite having to stop and bicker every two seconds the pair easily wedged one of the doors open wide enough for them to slip through one at a time. Kanaya watched as Karkat childishly dashed through so he could get in before Dave, the stoic maybe-knight seeming to give exactly zero fucks.

Kanaya secretly hoped he was indeed not a knight, it would be very disappointing to learn that the Knights of Astora were so…crude. Still, she thought, perhaps it's a bit silly to be basing her perceptions about the knights on what she's read in her not at all trashy books. Really, she's just setting herself up for disappointment isn't she? Hm.

Kanaya's preoccupation with these thoughts as she walked through the door is her excuse for why she didn't look up.

~)~)

Karkat was so, so fucking happy to have his muscles back. He wasn't certain, but he believed that he would be just strong enough to make the climb down the mountain. He was keeping that information to himself though, who knows how Strider would react to a hollow escaping the asylum, especially if he really was a knight of Astora, and Kanaya, well he wasn't really sure what he should do about that. There's no way she'd make the climb.

Karkat knew exactly of what Jack would want him to do, leave this broad and get his ass off the mountain. But fuck Jack. Karkat was sick and fucking tired of basing his decisions on what that asshole said, on his bullshit 'lessons'. That asshole left, so as far as Karkat was concerned he was no longer Jack's page, meaning he was free to make his own gods damned decisions, and no way in fuck was he just leaving this perfectly nice girl to rot in the asylum. He'd give her a fucking fitness class had to. It's not like they don't have the time. Or the space.

Clearly Karkat's attention was best served contemplating these facts, and not on some completely un-related, irrelevant diversion, like looking up.

~)~)~)

Dave made certain he was the last through the door; no telling when one of these guys would snap. Or when he himself would snap for that matter.

He didn't stray on that thought for too long though, years of being ambushed by Bro having trained him to immediately search for threats whenever he enters a room. Dave noted it was a large, evenly square room with numerous cracked urns and several cracked pillars that at one point held up a ceiling. Dave looked up, saw there was indeed no more ceiling, and was about to go and check out some of those urns when his eyes fell on a large statue above a huge set of double doors on the other side of the room. A statue that was breathing, and looking back at him, and holy shit that's not a statue is it?

"Fuck, run!"

~)~)~)~)

Kanaya did not run. Instead she instinctively whirled around to look at Dave, her eyes widening when she hears, and feels, the demon crash down to the floor on the other side of the room. She stares, frozen with fear, at the single most terrifying thing she's ever seen. The demon is identical to the one she and Karkat glimpsed in the courtyard of the lower cells, massively corpulent, with small, stunted wings, and a long, lip-less face that seems to be stuck in a permanent sneer. She also notices that it's well over five times her height, and holding what looks to be an uprooted tree not much smaller than itself.

At the same time the demon tightens its grip around its weapon Kanaya sees Karkat out of the corner of her eye making a beeline straight for a small opening to their left, Dave not far behind him. She shakes herself out of her stupor and runs after them, pushing off the ground as hard and as fast as her legs are capable. The demon brings its club above its head.

Dave and Karkat made it into the opening and immediately turned to face Kanaya, yelling for her to hurry. She was not ten feet away, certain she would make it, when the blast of air hit her. Had her heart been beating it would have stopped as the demon narrowly misses crushing her, though the deafening blow was swung with enough force that it knocked Kanaya forward, straight into the opening. She collides into Karkat, who attempted to catch her but is instead knocked to the ground with her. The last thing she sees before being knocked unconscious is the stone floor rising up towards her head over Karkat's shoulder.


	5. Coming Out Hard pt3

**Coming Out Hard **

**Part 3**

When Kanaya woke up, it was to the blurry but welcome image of an incredibly pretty blonde girl. As her vision cleared however, she realized she was instead looking at the vaguely worried face of a blonde male. She briefly wondered where the fuck she was and who this man is before her eyes moved down and she saw the faded red surcoat he was wearing and everything clicked back into place.

"Dave?"

"Damn girl, about time you woke up. Hey Karkat! Maryam's waken up, stop crying in the corner and get over here."

" Fuck you I am not fucking crying!"

She heard footsteps quickly approaching before seeing Karkat in the corner of her vision. "Shit Kanaya, are you alright?"

She didn't feel alright, not at first. Her head was pounding, everything was sore, and she felt like her whole body was frozen and immobile. But as her eyes fell upon the small fire in the corner of the otherwise empty room, identical to the one they found in the courtyard, she felt a warm, contented feelng wash over her. As seconds past she felt it all fade away, not just the pain and numbness but also that unpleasant feeling of hopelessness and resignation that had been chewing on the back of her mind ever since she first felt the knights tightening the ropes around her wrists. She pushed herself into a sitting position, telling Karkat that she was indeed alright, apparently.

"Gods damn it no you are not, your head is…the hell?"

"What? What's wrong with my head?"

"Nothing apparently. fuck, did the fire do this?"

Dave stepped forward, pushing an indignant Karkat out of the way and helping Kanaya back on her feet. "Apparently the magic fire has magic powers, yeah, that's a huge shocker. Glad to see you're okay Maryam but we've got to get moving."

"Fuck you Strider, this is the first place we've been in that doesn't have corpses either trying to kill us or falling out of the sky."

Dave opened his mouth to reply but Kanaya, sensing an argument, shot out "No karkat, I believe Dave is right. That we are not under attack from hollows only means that they haven't found us yet."

"…Fine"

"Awesome" Dave said, fitting his helmet back on his head and drawing what was left of his sword.

Karkat handed Kanaya an old wooden plank with a strap tied around it, meant to be a shield she presumed, and together they made their way away from the fire and towards the exit.

Or at least they were, until Dave suddenly jumped away from the opening and straight into Karkat, narrowly dodging an arrow aimed right for his head.

Karkat gave a surprised shout as both he and Dave fell to the ground.

"God damn that was close."

"Godamnit you cocksucker, get the fuck off me!"

Dave instead merely turned his head to stare right at Karkat and with an almost audible smirk said to him "Simmer down Vantas, I just had a near death experience here. Give me second."

Kanaya, certain that Karkat will lose his head and seriously attack Dave, immediately runs over and nudges the armored knight upward. Dave, thankfully, takes the hint and gets off Karkat of his own volition, brushing imaginary dust off his surcoat.

"Dave that was childish and you know it."

"Sorry mom."

"I hope you fucking…"

"And that's enough from you too. We should be focusing on the matter at hand, not wasting time with your petty fights."

"Alright, fair enough. Hey Vantas, get off your ass and come check this out."

Kanaya, fully expecting to have to restrain Karkat, was surprised to see her angry friend simply get up and walk over towards the wall next to Dave, carefully peeking out over the edge of the wall into a ceiling-less hallway lined with dilapidated cells. Kanaya assumed it would be unwise to dash across the opening to the other side, where there would be room for her to see what was going on herself, and instead asked for a status report.

"What Is Out There Exactly?"

"Hollow with a bow and arrow. And bitchin aim, apparently."

"BUT JUST AS STUPID AS THE REST. HOLY SHIT IS HE ACTUALLY KNOCKING ANOTHER ARROW? LIKE WE CAN'T JUST DUCK OUR HEADS BACK IN THE MOMENT HE LETS IT FLY? FUCK YES! THIS IS PERFECT! WE CAN JUST SIT TIGHT AND LET HIM RUN OUT OF ARROWS, THEN RUSH HIS DECAYING ASS."

"Yeah, fuck that."

"…EXCUSE ME?"

"That plans all well and good, but would take forever and is lame as shit."

"OH! FUCKING OH! IT'S TOO SLOW AND TOO LAME HUH? WELL FUCK, I SUPPOSE YOU HAVE A BETTER IDEA!?"

Before Dave could reply both he and Karkat ducked back into the room to avoid an arrow.

"Okay, you saw the cell ahead of us to the left right? With the body in it? What I'm going to do is run up there, grab the body, use it as a shield, and get close enough to hit him with my…."

"…"

"…"

"…"

"…shit"

"WITH YOUR WHAT? WELL STRIDER, WHAT, IF I MAY BE SO KIND AS TO ASK, DID YOU INTEND TO HIT THE HOLLOW WITH, HMM?"

"Okay look, I'm a little forgetful alright. It happens sometimes."

"YOU FORGOT ABOUT THE BLOOD STAINED HUNK OF METAL STRAPPED ON YOUR ARM, THE SAME GODS DAMNED HUNK OF METAL YOU'VE BEEN USING AS YOUR PRIMARY WEAPON?!"

"Wow Dave That Is Just…Wow."

"Okay yeah fuck you guys too. Now if you don't mind I've got a hollow to gut, outta my way assholes."

Dave raised his shield and dashed around the corner and down the corridor, heading straight for the hollow archer. It was actually kind of heroic, Kanaya thought, dashing forward with nothing but his shield to grant them safe passage. Or rather it would have been heroic had what they assumed was only a corpse not lurched forward as Dave ran by, tripping him up and causing him to fall flat on his face.

Kanaya gasped when the hollow climbed on top of Dave, pinning him down as the archer readied another arrow. She was about to rush over to Dave and, well, she wasn't sure exactly what she would have done but thankfully Karkat beat her to it, pushing past her and running towards Dave's pinned form.

Karkat lifted up the slowly flailing hollow and slammed it's head into the wall, grabbing up Dave's broken sword and rushing the archer.

Kanaya saw the arrow fly and thought for certain she was about to watch her new friend die. To her surprise however Karkat swatted the arrow away with the remains of Dave's sword. She saw blood fly from his wrist, but it was far from the fatal wound it would have been. Karkat jumped onto the taller hollow, forcing it to the ground and repeatedly stabbing it in the neck, splattering his face and chest with thick black blood.

Kanaya ran forward to help Dave back to his feet, but had trouble tearing her eyes away from Karkat, who had yet to rise off of the slain hollow. She couldn't help but begin reconsidering Karkat's claim to knighthood.

"Did he just…"

"Yes."

"With his…"

"I Believe So."

"…well damn."

Once Dave was steady and on his feet he and Kanaya made their way to Karkat, who was kneeling down next to the dead hollow and wrapping his injured wrist with cloth. Karkat finished and stood right as Dave got to him.

Had Dave not had his helmet's visor down Kanaya would have born witness to the incredibly rare sight of a Strider at a loss for words. As it was, all she saw was Dave raise his first outwards towards Karkat in what was to her a strange and unfamiliar gesture. Karkat shot the other knight a glare before mimicking Dave's stance, bumping their fists together.

Kanaya simply looked on, bemused at the unfamiliar gesture of what she could only assume was some sort of weird pseudo-friendship type thing.

~)

Kanaya went ahead of her companions into the next passage, which led her to another hallway overlooking the courtyard she and Karkat found Dave in. She could make out two ascending staircases around each corner of the overlook, one of which had long since collapsed, that as far as she could tell led up towards an area above the large door which led to the room that contained the Demon. Excited about possibly being able to bypass the monster, she immediately went to her right, turned the corner, and headed up the staircase, noting a parallel staircase next to it leading back down towards the courtyard for future exploration. It was dark near the top, so she couldn't see anything, but she could certainly hear a strange sound, almost like someone was rolling something heavy.

She heard the giant metal ball make contact with the first of the stairs, each roll breaking off bits of stone from the floor of the stairs on impact. She did not instinctively jump off the side of the staircase, which she would later begrudgingly admit is exactly what a trained knight would have done. Instead, she looked upwards towards the shadows with what she would have described as "Mildly Concerned Curiosity." When she realized what was happening Kanaya quickly attempted to jump off the side but was too late to avoid the sphere completely. It hit her legs mid-air, making her scream out in both surprise and pain as she's suddenly set spinning in the air, only stopping when she lands on her back on the second set of stairs below.

As she laid there, the edges of the stairs digging into her back, she could vaguely here the sound Dave's metal boots hitting the stone floor, followed closely by the comparatively soft patter of Karkat's bare feet.

She wanted to call out to them, but instead decided she was best off staying still and not moving, waiting for the pain enveloping her body to subside while being quietly grateful that she could still feel pain, especially in her legs. She couldn't imagine how a hollow would fare without the use of their legs.

She heard Karkat calling her name from somewhere above her, and heard the sound of metal tearing through decaying flesh somewhere above that. Grimacing, she forced herself upright calling out to her friend. "I'm Down Here Karkat."

Karkat ran down the stairs, getting to her right as she unsteadily made it to her feet, one hand braced against the wall. "SHIT, KANAYA, ARE YOU ALRIGHT?"

"My Back And Legs Are Both In A Great Deal Of Pain, But None Of The Damage Is Permanent I Think. Come To Think Of It What With Our Magic Healing Fire I Suppose No Damage Would Have Been Permanent Beyond Death Of Course But Still In Light Of The Worst Case Scenario I…"

"OKAY IM JUST GONNA CUT YOU OFF THERE AND TAKE THAT AS A YES."

"Sorry. Yes, I Am Fine."

"GOOD. C'MON, LETS HEAD BACK UP AND WAIT FOR THAT ASSHAT TO FINISH KILLING THE HOLLOW."

Kanaya and Karkat made their way back up the stairs, Kanaya limping and leaning on Karkat for support. They walked into a room made accessible by the giant steel ball breaking the wall down, said ball resting innocently against the wall. Kanaya resisted the childish urge to glare at it as Karkat helped her reach a small and conveniently arranged pile of loose stone bricks near the back of the room.

Kanaya eased herself into a semi comfortable reclining position, absently staring at the surprisingly clean water that filled the center of the room up to her ankles and being privately amused by Karkat's dedicated but failing attempts to not look concerned for her. Right as she's about to question Karkat as to what's taking Dave so long she notices something shining in the water next to her makeshift chair, almost entirely buried beneath crumbled bits of stone.

She manages to clear off enough of the debris to reveal a brilliant emerald colored flask. Picking it up, she notices two more beneath it, also held in place by stone but miraculously un-cracked. The pain in her legs momentarily forgotten, she gets up off her seat to begin moving away the obstructing rocks, determined to reach the flasks. Vaguely she registers that Dave has returned and has embroiled himself in another argument with Karkat.

Setting aside the three flasks, she picks up one small pebble in each hand and tosses one each at her companions. One bounces off Dave's helmet and the other off Karkat's skull, Dave looking up in surprise at Kanaya, and Karkat getting interrupted mid-sentence and giving Kanaya an incredulous, opened mouth look that, personally, she found just incredibly silly.

"THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR?"

Kanaya simply smiled and lifted one of the flasks she uncovered and held it out towards Karkat, who took it out of her hand and began inspecting it.

"SO, WHAT? WHATS THE BIG DEAL ABOUT A FEW FUCKING BOTTLES."

"Be a good a way to store some of this water, kind of redundant for us I guess but a sip of cold water would be nice sometime."

Kanaya simply sat there, stunned, while Dave picked up one of the two remaining flasks up and began filling it with water from the center of the room. "Do Neither Of You Really Have No Idea Regarding What We May Have Found Here?"

"uh, no."

"OH FOR FUCKS SAKE, WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT. THEY'RE JUST FLASKS AREN'T THEY?"

"I Understand That The Dark Tales Are Not Required Reading Outside Of Thorolund But Really? Nearly Every Book With An Undead In It Makes At The Very Least A Passing Mention Of The Fabled Estus Flasks."

"WELL FUCKING EXCUSE ME FOR HAVING BETTER THINGS TO DO WITH MY TIME THAN READING SHITTY MAKE-BELIEVE NOVELS!"

"Yeah, not much of a reader myself here Maryam. You're gonna have to fill us in."

"Well, Supposedly These Flasks Contain A Powerful Regenerative Potion, Said To Derive Its Energy From The First Flame Itself. There Are Of Course Many Other Myths And Legends Surrounding The Flasks, But The Magic Potion Theory Is The Only One Considered Church Canon. It Is Actually The Origin Of The White Talismans So Often Attributed To Thorolunds Cleric Knights. The Story Is That They Block The Use Of Such Potions By The Undead. "

"Well I hate to break it to you but these were empty, and the water I put in mine doesn't look very magical."

"SOUNDS LIKE SOME FANATIC CHURCH BULLSHIT TO ME."

"Well, Maybe You Are Right. Still, Three Flasks Matching The Description Of The Estus Flasks, Found Buried Beneath Part Of A Collapsed Wall In An Undead Asylum And, Despite Being Made Of Glass, Not So Much As Scratched? It's Almost Like Fate Isn't It?"

"…WHAT THE EVER-LOVING FUCK ARE YOU EVEN FUCKING SAYING."

"Actually, against all odds I think I might kind of get what you're saying there Maryam. I vote we keep the magic bottles."

"FINE, WHATEVER, LIKE IT EVEN FUCKING MATTERS. ARE WE ALL DONE HERE, CAUSE I PERSONALLY WOULD JUST LOVE TO GET BACK TO WANDERING AIMLESSLY AROUND THIS FUCKING DEATH TRAP LOOKING FOR SOME ASSHOLE WHO PROBABLY ISN'T EVEN HERE ANYMORE."

"After you Karkles."

"FUCK YOU!"

~)~)

Kanaya decided she would be better off sticking behind Dave and Karkat, a decision proven very wise when the three undead ascended the now much safer stairs and, with a liberal amount of kicking and cursing, managed to force open the rusty gate blocking their progress only to be greeted by two very nimble hollows with relatively sharp daggers and yet another archer. Kanaya was right when she assumed that the stairs would allow them to bypass the demon, the short hallway leading to a large balcony overlooking a small graveyard set on what seemed to be the very peak of the mountain, a small path winding through its middle leading all the way up to the top before dropping off into oblivion.

Kanaya thought that despite the gray, cloud covered sky it made for a lovely sight. She could see herself looking out at this view as her brain slowly rotted and she went insane. Or perhaps she'd end it herself before then, die while she was still Kanaya Maryam and not some flesh hungry hollow who might potentially murder a brave knight like Dave or Karkat.

Their time together was coming to a close. She knew that they had as of now, between the three of them, been everywhere in the Asylum. There was no sign of Dave's mysterious target, meaning he would be beginning his descent back down the mountain. She also knew that Karkat, with his miraculously regained strength and his natural vigor would likely take after Dave in a few days, if not sooner. She knew that she was simply not fit enough to join him, that she would be left here to whither and rot and, gods willing, one day eventually die. Completely and totally alone.


	6. My Homeboys Tried to Warn Me

**My Homeboys Tried To Warn Me**

Once the hollows on the balcony were dispatched Dave and Karkat immediately got themselves into another fight. As far as Kanaya could tell this time they were arguing about a shield Karkat pulled off one of the slain hollows; Dave was adamant that Karkat should take the shield while Karkat gave a very long, and loud, explanation as to exactly why Carim knights didn't use shields and where exactly Dave could shove his scavenged prize.

She knew that she ought to go and help them resolve their petty little dispute but at that moment she simply could not bring herself to care, instead focusing on beating back the wave of depression and resignation that fell over her with the realization of her imminent abandonment.

Looking to her left she saw another opening at the opposite end of the balcony, the hallway they could've accessed via the collapsed staircase back down below. She knew that there would be nothing in there but stones and dust and, if she was unlucky, a hollow who was too deaf to hear the sound of Dave and Karkat's argument. But still. It was the last room in her new home she had yet to explore. Would it bring her some sort of closure, or comfort? Probably not. But it was better than listening to Karkat's scratchy voice and staring at buried corpses.

She entered the room slowly and absent-mindedly, her thoughts miles away. She was considering maybe getting a few cuts or scrapes and heading back to one of the strange fires they'd found, remembering how good it felt when the magic had healed her injuries, how warm and content it made her feel, smudging out all her negative thoughts and feelings regarding her dismal situation. Her mind was forced back into the here-and-now however when her eyes fell upon something that was, well, not quite what she was expecting.

There, in the very back of the room, against the iron bars of the door leading to the collapsed staircase, was a dead hollow, heavily armored and lying face down with a huge, undulating blade shoved through its torso. Along the curves of the blade were beautiful flowing designs, many of which seemed to take on the shape of small flowers. The hilt of the blade was nearly level with Kanaya's neck, and she suddenly felt the strangest urge to grab the blade and pull it free despite knowing that there was no way she'd be able to lift the massive weapon. She moved towards it all the same however, and as she got closer she noticed the faint blue glow on the ground a few feet in front of the hollow.

Kneeling down, Kanaya was amazed to find the glow was from some sort of writing carved into the stone floor. The glow got brighter the closer she got, and she found that by putting her hand beneath The marks they got bright enough for her to make out what seemed to be a large, decorative signature done in the style of the ancient scholars. While her knowledge of that old script was limited to what she gleaned from a couple of books her mother insisted she read, she was fairly confident in her translation of the intricate script into two single letters; an R and an L.

Her thoughts on the presence of the strange blade and this clearly magical signature however were cut short by Karkat's terrified scream.

~)

"…IT'S CALLED DODGING, IT'S A VERY SIMPLE AND EASY TO LEARN CONCEPT THAT INVALIDATES THE USE OF A SHIELD. TRUST ME, IF I HAD MY FUCKING SHOTEL RIGHT NOW EVEN ONE OF THE REAL BLUE SHIELDS WOULDN'T BE WORTH SHIT. NOT ONLY THAT BUT…"

"But? You gonna continue with your shitty rant or not?"

"FUCK YOU, DO YOU NOT HEAR THAT BREATHING NOISE?"

"…no. What breathing noise?"

"UGH, IT'S PROBABLY BECAUSE OF THAT RIDICULOUS FUCKING HELMET YOU'RE WEARING. IT'S JUST LIKE YOUR STUPID FUCKING SHIELD. IF YOU WERE TOO SLOW OR TOO DUMB TO JUST GET OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY THEN YOU DESERVED TO GET YOUR ASS CUT UP. SHIT, THAT NOISE IS SO FAMILIAR FOR SOME REASON."

"You brain must be starting to rot cause I don't hear anything but the bitter sound of ungrateful bitching."

"IT SOUNDS LIKE ITS COMING FROM BACK HERE."

Dave watched Karkat pace around the balcony before eventually edging towards a small pedestal hanging out above the room the upper section of the asylum was hanging over. He was slowly tightening his grip over the hilt of what was left of his sword, wondering in the back of his mind whether or not the shouty little bastard was starting to crack when it suddenly occurred to his forgetful brain exactly which room this balcony had to overlook.

"Shit Karkat get away from there!"

Karkat, rather than heed Dave's advice merely whirled around and, from the look of his expression, prepared to yell at the armored knight some more. No words left his furious mouth, however, because right when he turned to fully face Dave he felt a rush of air at his back and, just for a moment, that breathing noise was a little higher up and a lot closer.

Dave watched, horrified, as the demon rose up from behind Karkat on its stunted wings, hammer raised above its head. Before his brain even processed what was happening Karkat instinctively .rolled forward, dodging the demons massive hammer as it fell back to the ground. He hadn't gotten far enough though, and screamed as the platform crumbled and he went tumbling down into the lower room with the demon.

Dave stood there, frozen, for half a second more before running forward and jumping off the newly formed ledge. He landed unsteadily on the back of the demons head, his legs landing on its shoulders, and narrowly avoiding impalement on the creature's thin, branch-like horns. Quickly the Astoran knight pushed forward with his legs forcing his upper body over the top of the demons head and catching the edge of his boot on one of its horns. Upside down, he pulled his shield with both hands and plunged it into the demons left eye. The monster howled in pain and shock as it thrashed his head forward, launching Dave halfway across the room.

Flying uncontrollably through the air, Dave discovers, is an incredibly disorienting and unpleasant experience. Almost as unpleasant as landing.

Dave lands on his right shoulder, hard and at an angle. He feels more than hears a loud pop as a sharp pain explodes out of his shoulder, nearly bringing tears to his eyes. His brother trained him well though, and in the space of a second he embraced the pain, letting it flow through his body and dissolve somewhere in his back of his head. Shakily he rose to his feet, one arm hanging limp by his side and the other tightly gripping his blood stained shield. He warily watched the demon as it flailed around ahead of him, patting at its eye in pain and confusion.

Backing away slowly he looked to his right to see Karkat struggling against the iron bars that now blocked the side passaged they'd originally used to get out. "Hey asshole, how's that door looking? Are we as fucked as I think we are?"

"YEAH, WE'RE PRETTY FUCKED. BUT IM NOT DYING WITHOUT ATLEAST MAKING THIS FUCKER BLEED PROFUSELY, SO WHEN HE RECOVES GET HIS ATTENTION AND KEEP YOUR DISTANCE. I'LL HANDLE THE REST."

"The hell, are you saying you wanna use me as bait?"

"ITS CALLED HAVING A FUCKING, OH SHIT MOVE!"

Dave noticed too late. The demon was not as dumb as they'd thought. As it thrashed about in pain it had also been slowly moving closer to Dave. He had been keeping an eye on it, prepared to make a mad dash away if it looked like it was going to recover or if it moved its flailing mass too close to him. However, he hadn't counted on it immediately snapping out of its fit as if the whole thing had been a ploy to get closer to the much faster knight, and he certainly hadn't counted on the fat bastard making up the distance by fucking _jumping_ at least twenty feet towards him with its hammer poised to strike.

Had Dave not been rigorously trained for years by Dirk to react instinctively to threats, he would've been crushed to death before he even realized what had happened. As it was his arm brought itself up the moment he saw the demon move out of the corner of his eye, and Dave, Karkat and if was even capable of such things the demon as well, all stared in shocked amazement at the demon's hammer resting against Dave's shield. I had felt like his arm had been kicked by a horse, but he'd blocked it. He'd fucking blocked it.

~)~)

For an undead with no proper weapons or armor, and another undead with no proper weapon and what was likely a dislocated shoulder, Karkat thought they were doing pretty well. He wasn't sure exactly how the hell that asshole had stopped the demons hammer with his shield, but apparently it wasn't something he was willing to try again; Dave had spent the last five minutes just sprinting around the room, the considerably slower demon unable to land a blow. Karkat had to admit, the smug bastard had stamina.

For his part Karkat had used every opening he found to drive his blade into the demons gigantic butt cheeks. He was literally stabbing it in the ass, something he would have found funny were he not about to die.

He was kind of surprised at how well he was doing; he didn't remember being this fast even at his peak. But no matter how many times he drove his sword into the demons corpulent ass, his shitty excuse for a blade just wasn't go deep enough to get past the layers of fat and draw any significant amounts of blood. It was clear to the angry knight that they were fucked.

Dave would get tired eventually and give out, the demon would crush his stoic ass, and then the already exhausted Karkat would be next in line.

Shame that retarded fuck was going to die with him. At least Kanaya was safe.

~)~)~)

Kanaya was terrified.

When she heard Karkat scream she immediately shot up and made to dash back to the balcony. However, as she rose from the ground she unknowingly brushed her hand over the signature engraved in the floor, activating the ancient spell. Immediately the room was filled with a blinding blue light. Kanaya gave a surprised shout and quickly shut her eyes, immediately going still. Even with her eyes shut the searing blue light made her head ache as she slowly walked forward, terrified and desperately wanting to get out of the room.

As her outstretched hands made contact with the opposite wall a high pitched ringing noise sounded out from somewhere in her skull. Feeling the wall, the turned and pressed her back up against it, pushing her hands to her ears in a futile attempt to block out that terrible noise. She knew that the exit was to her left, only a few feet, and if she could get to it maybe she could get away from… whatever the hell this was. She managed to sidle across the wall about two feet before the spell finally knocked her out.

When she blinked her eyes open a few seconds later, the light and noise thankfully gone, she saw a second message scrawled into the floor in front of her.

"Draw the blade, save your friends."

~)~)~)~)

Karkat was beginning to think the only source of entertainment the gods had left was to find new and creative ways of making his life worse. The demon decided that the bastard literally slicing up its ass was a higher priority than the bastard running around like a heavily armored, headless chicken. Karkat was thankfully nimble enough to roll out of the way of the demons hammer, though the force of the blows was jarring and every time he came back up a little slower and a little more unsteady. He didn't think he'd be able to keep it up much longer.

Dave meanwhile had taken the short respite to reset his aching shoulder, his scream drowned out by one of the demons thunderous blows, and to inhale the most massive quantity of oxygen his lungs would allow him to hold. He tried to take Karkat's place, attacking the demons backside while it was occupied by the other knight, but his sword was shorter than even Karkat's and most of the time didn't even draw blood. He came to the same conclusion as Karkat; they were completely fucked.

~)~)~)~)~)

As Kanaya drug the heavy sword out of the room and back onto the balcony she was once again blinded and stunned by the noise and light of another message appearing. After a few seconds her head cleared and she saw another message carved into the floor a few feet away. As she ran towards it however another tremor worked its way through the building and she tripped, again falling to the ground.

She grimaced as the pain in her back flared up again. Gritting her teeth, she used the sword to push herself up and made her way over towards the writing. As much as she'd like to just lay there for a while, it didn't take a genius to figure out what the loud crashing sound coming from the lower room was, and where Dave and Karkat were.

"Wait for the demon to be directly under you, then jump off and let gravity drive the sword into the demons skull. If the magic has held, after all these years, then this blade should rend both the demons flesh and bone with relative ease."

Kanaya read the message, thankfully written in a more modern script, with a great deal of trepidation. She was supposed to kill the demon? Her hesitation disappeared when she felt another tremor work its way through the balcony. She couldn't just let Karkat die down there.

Using the sword as a crutch, she made her way to the section where, previously, a small pedestal jutted out into the demons room. Now however it was simply a drop off straight into the room from where Kanaya observed Karkat expertly evading the demons massive hammer and an exhausted Dave struggling to deal some sort of wound to the monsters backside with his dagger.

She'd thought that since she was looking down on it from so high up, the demon would appear smaller. It did not.

She attempted to scream out to Karkat, either to let him know that he should lead the demon towards her or to catch the demons attention directly. When she tried to force air through her throat however she felt a horrible, wet, tearing sensation and immediately broke into a coughing fit, blood a few shades too dark leaking from the corner of her mouth.

As she doubled over the demons hammer once again struck the ground, shaking the entire section of the asylum. Kanaya fell to her hands and knees to avoid being knocked off her feet and winding up in the same position as the knights, the sword clattering to the ground beside her. She spat out the sour, dark blood that drained into her mouth from her torn throat and wondered exactly what the hell she was supposed to do now.

She really didn't think she was cut out for this; jumping from on high, blade in hand, and rescuing hapless knights was something that the characters in her books, and strong, capable warriors like Dave and Karkat did. Clearly, these messages were left for someone like them, not her. She was just some merchant's daughter for fucks sake. How could she be expected to do this?

Both her doubts and her dilemma as to how to draw in the demon were answered by the light, much brighter this time, and without the unsettling noise. When the light faded she saw it, another message, right there on the floor between her hands.

"I have faith in you, Kanaya."

~)~)~)~)~)~)

Karkat rolled away from yet another hammer blow, quickly righting himself and putting distance between him and the demon as it raised its hammer back up off the ground. He opted for walking backwards as quickly as he could and then simply standing still, conserving his energy for when he would need to dodge again.

He'd been banished from the closest thing he'd ever had to a home, cursed with un-death, betrayed his mentor, strapped to a wagon with some flighty broad for several months as his body decomposed. He'd been stabbed, beaten and tortured. He'd fought, bled, and sometimes killed for scraps of food or flasks of clean water. But through all that he'd never doubted that he wouldn't come out alive. He'd suffer, that'd been made very clear early on, by the gods he would suffer, but he would always live to suffer tomorrow. He'd never despaired.

As he looked up at the demon, muscles sore and gasping for air, he felt despair. Each time he pushed himself up it felt harder and harder, and soon his eyes were able to confirm his fears. His muscles weren't just tiring out, they were shrinking, atrophying. What was worse, his head was getting…fuzzy. He was having a lot more trouble focusing on the five hundred pounds of hammer swinging death after his ass than he should. He was too scared to even broach the thought that he might really be going hollow.

He narrowly dodged the demons next attack, the force from the blow causing him to roll much farther than he'd intended. Disoriented, sluggishly got to his feet and turned his head upwards toward the demon who thankfully had turned its attention back to the armored knight.

Karkat watched as Dave who, frustrated with his inability to inflict any real wound on the monster, had actually begun kicking it in the ass, rolled repeatedly between the demons legs, forcing it to constantly turn around in order to line up a its hammer.

Karkat's relief over the tireless Astoran taking over demon dodging duty was short lived however as a bright light flashed in his eyes and a terrible, unrecognizable noise tore through his skull. Falling to his knees, his hands pressed against his ears, he was terrified that this was it, he was finally going fully hollow. He'd lose his mind and either be killed by the demon, killed by Dave, or kill Dave and then be killed by the demon. Before he could let loose the first of what was to be his last long string of curses however, both the light and the noise leaving as quickly as it came.

Looking back up, he saw both Dave and the demon looking around groggily, Dave rising up from having fallen to the ground that the demon furiously shaking its head back and forth. Apparently whatever the fuck that light was, it hit them too. _Oh thank you sweet merciful fuck _he thought, _maybe I'm not going hollow yet after all._

Once again his relief was short lived. The demon, instead of going for the still disoriented Dave, instead turned its gaze back towards what was left of the ledge leading to the balcony. Karkat followed the its gaze and went cold when he saw Kanaya, on her hands and knees with her face turned downward on what remained of the ledge leading to the balcony.

He shouted to her, "KANAYA YOU FUCKHEAD, GET THE FUCK AWAY!", but neither she nor the demon seemed to notice him.

He rose unsteadily and tried to run towards the demon, desperate to get its attention away from Kanaya. Still dizzy he ran ten feet at most, in a zigzag, before falling flat on his face.

Pushing himself back up on his hands he watched, helplessly as the demon squatted down right below Kanaya, its stunted, tattered wings flexing back. He could see it now; the demon would bound upwards, hammer raised, and crush Kanaya just like it tried to crush him.

The demon barely rose half a foot before Kanaya walked off the ledge, a monstrous blade pulled out of nowhere and pointed downward. Kanaya lost her grip as soon as the blade hit the demon. She rolled off the demons shoulder and fell to the ground. The blade embedded itself into the top of the demons head, three quarters of its length going straight through its skull and into its brain.

**ST: FYI, in this particular rendition of the Dark Souls world strange, outlandish names with six letters is a custom practiced commonly in Thorolund and Carim, so much so that it's almost always a safe assumption that someone with such a name is from one of those two cities. That's why characters in this story will immediately assume certain other characters are from those cities. That assumption will not always be correct.**


	7. Divergent Paths

**Divergent Paths**

Dave leaned up against one of the few remaining pillars, panting heavily and rubbing his sore head. He wanted nothing more than to remove all this hot, chaffing armor and just lie down somewhere and fucking rest. But that blast of magic had, among other things, given him a wicked headache and nearly every motion he made sent a sharp pang through his skull. So he just stood there, one arm leaning against the pillar, catching his breath and watching Vantas.

As far as Dave could tell the angry little midget was reeling from the magic too, though he was also hell bent on getting to Maryam. The girl had been lucky enough to land to the right of the demon, opposite the direction where its lifeless body collapsed after she'd driven that monster of a sword into its head. She landed hard and hadn't moved since.

As the mind numbing pain in his head dulled to something a little less numbing he dropped his shield as brought his hand up to raise his visor. Leaning his armored shoulder up against the pillar he struggled to pull the thick leather glove off his right hand, exposing his bare forearm to the cold mountain air. He used the glove to wipe the sweat from his face before dropping to the ground and sitting back against the pillar.

His journey to the Northern Asylum had been a long one, and making it in the thick suit of armor would have been next to impossible. By the time his body had begun breaking down he'd sold most of the plate armor off his chest and long since discarded his right pauldron, vambrace, and gauntlet. He'd been worried that losing that much weight, while making the trip to the Asylum more manageable, would bite him in the ass once he actually arrived.

As it turns out, he was right to discard the armor. Had he been fully suited he would've collapsed from exhaustion and been crushed by the demon.

Once his breathing returned to normal he turned his head toward Vantas and Maryam, watching as the annoying little bastard gently helped the other undead sit up. He called out to them, "hey Maryam, you alright?"

She looked over her friend's shoulder, said friend currently occupied with fussing over some sort of injury on her leg, and answered back "Aside from a small gash on my leg I'm quite alright."

Dave gave a half-hearted thumbs up before slumping his arm back down, leaning his head forward, and shutting his eyes. He'd ask about the important shit, like where she got the sword, what the hell that blast of magic was, and why Karkat is a fucking idiot, after they'd had a damn breather.

And then the light came back.

He gasped, eyes widening, as the magic worked its way back into his skull. Distantly he could hear Karkat screaming "FUCK" over and over again, though the magic was screwing with his senses, making it seem like he was hearing Karkat's shouts from underwater.

He'd felt this once before, on his first mission outside Astora. He'd been younger, only fifteen, and never so much as touched any sort of armor tougher than the light leather vest and bracers Dirk taught him to make. His only weapon had been a plain but sturdy shortsword, the only weapon Dirk was willing to let his younger brother leave their armory with.

His task was simple: "Take some of these dragon tongue seeds to an alchemist in Toadstool Hollow. It's a small hamlet about a day's trip north of the city. Watch your ass."

And watch his ass he did. Even though any roads that close to Astora would be regularly patrolled by the king's soldiers, Dave wasn't letting his hand leave the hilt of his sword. He knew danger could come from anywhere, Dirk had seen to that.

Unfortunately for Dave 'anywhere' apparently didn't register with his brain as a magic seal carved into the doorway of a paranoid wizard too deaf to hear the delivery boy knocking. Ten minutes later he was nursing a vicious headache and wiping vomit from the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief offered by a deaf ass wizard who explained in agonizing detail how you can weaponize a magic rune by inscribing it with too much magic. The overcharged rune would release pure, concentrated magic that could basically fuck the brain of any nearby sentient beings into next week without any collateral damage. And the stronger the wizard, the more dangerous the overcharged rune.

Were Dave not such a stone cold badass he would be pissing his chainmail at the idea of meeting the sorcerer who'd set the runes in the undead asylum. The fact the he'd sweated out whatever liquid that might be left in his recently restored body was probably nice too though.

~)

It was up to Kanaya to translate, and for the last half hour she'd been etching her translations into the cold dirt of the courtyard with an errant metal bar scavenged for her by Karkat, who was currently resting at the fire with Dave, who'd removed most of his armor and was wiping the insides and joints down with a rag soaked in some sort of strange oil-like substance.

Clad in nothing but cloth shorts, the foul mouthed knight certainly cut an impressive figure. She thought she ought to be very attracted to him, he was essentially a cruder version of the main character in several of her favorite books, but she just didn't feel anything other than a desire to see what he would look like in something a little more red and form fitting than his armor and surcoat.

Shaking her head and pushing that issue to the back of her mind, something she'd gotten quite good at back at home, she turned her eyes back to her work. Unlike the knights Kanaya fully expected to find a new message scrawled in magic in the ground once the blinding light of the magic dissipated. She wasn't expecting the entire floor of the room to be covered in them however. Once she'd explained to her companions what exactly the brightly glowing markings were Karkat assigned her the task of translating and later, using a short piece of metal bar he'd scavenged, inscribing them into the ground around the flaming sword, which the markings referred to as a bonfire, as way of passing on the information on to any who might come to that place after them.

As she worked it became clear that the messages contained a great deal of valuable information from their mysterious benefactor, who according to Dave must be an extremely powerful wizard. Among the information were instructions on how to fill the Estus Flasks; as it turned out the slow moving flames of the bonfire itself could be stored in the dull green bottles, which when consumed can supposedly heal an undead of any wound. Kanaya had been certain to relay this information as soon as she read it, and now all three of them had a green flask filled with liquid fire strapped securely to their waists.

The messages also revealed the secret behind the dual mysteries of Dave's restored body and his miraculous blocking of the demons hammer. Apparently the undead could return their bodies by resting at a bonfire after obtaining a small black sprite aptly named humanity, which Dave informed her he'd found on the corpse of a bandit he'd killed on the way up here and that the sprite had crumbled into his hand when he'd applied just the slightest bit of pressure.

They'd also learned that when an undead killed something it stole that something's soul and that when they rested at a bonfire they'd be strengthened by it. Kanaya personally found the idea of making herself stronger by stealing souls a little disturbing, though it did answer the boys question as to how Dave blocked the demons hammer, something Kanaya kind of wished she'd been there to see. Apparently Dave had killed a "shit ton of bitch-ass spider fetish bandits" on his way up the mountains. A separate message elaborated on this, explaining that an undead will steal the soul of any dying sentient creature as long as they are in its general vicinity. And while Dave and Karkat both attested to feeling significantly different once they approached the bonfire after the demons death, Dave stating that his armor was nowhere near as heavy as it should be and Karkat claiming to feel like he could catch an arrow with his teeth, Kanaya felt no different. She wasn't sure what to make of this, and their mysterious wizard friend left no messages that might illuminate the issue. As it was, she pushed the issue aside for later.

One mystery that hadn't been solved however was the inclusion of her name in the message urging her to take down the demon. When she'd told Karkat about this he'd become very unsettled at the prospect that this mysterious wizard was watching them somehow, though Dave merely muttered "fuckin' wizards, man" and waved the issue off. She got the impression this wasn't the first instance of magic related shenanigans he'd run across.

Finally, Kanaya finished scratching the last bit of information into the frozen dirt. She informed Karkat of her completed task, and he immediately rose from his position by the fire to address the group.

"All right, now we've done our part to make someone out there in the future a little less of an ignorant shit lord, only without frying their brains in the process unlike the asshole who left those shitty messages for us. Good job. Now, Strider, time to put this supposed super strength of yours to the test and find out whether or not this magical old fart is blowing metaphorical steam up our collective metaphorical asshole. Go open that big fucking door."

Kanaya could tell Dave wanted badly to verbally lash out at Karkat and was happy to see him restrain himself and give a grunt of assent instead, shrugging on his surcoat and some thin chain-link grieves before rising from the fire making his way across the ruined room towards the large door on the other side, carefully going around the corpse of the demon lying just to its right, the large sword still stubbornly lodged in its cranium.

A part of her liked to think the withering glare, the very best one she could manage, she shot Dave's way had been what had kept his mouth shut, though in fact he found her attempts at being threatening kind of hilarious. He did however know that it was much easier to just go along with the angry little fucker rather than spend forever arguing with him only to have Maryam jump in and mediate, making both of them feel like a couple of whiny kids in the process.

He braced both hands against the door and pushed as hard as he could, the backs of his feet lifting of the ground as he tried pushing himself off the ground to get more force on the door. Slowly, his face turning red from the exertion, Dave forced one side of the giant metal double doors open wide enough for the three of them to slip through.

From the courtyard Kanaya watched in amazement at the Astoran's incredible show of strength. Not that she doubted the wisdom of their mysterious benefactor, because clearly this individual was a very wise and powerful entity who was assuredly watching over them. It was just that, actually seeing a mortal man move something like that was just awe inspiring. And from the muttered curse she heard from somewhere to her left, she felt confident that Karkat agreed.

~)~)

Karkat found this whole "Dave has super strength" deal just a little bit disturbing. It wasn't that he was expecting the bastard to turn of them or anything, hell the shithead had been right behind Karkat when he'd fallen into the demons room. While Karkat personally felt that that was a dumbass decision, there was no reason for both of them to die, he appreciated Strider having his back. As far as Karkat was concerned he and Dave were even for saving each other's lives. Mutual life saving aside however he still found it unsettling how easily the knight could dispatch him. The slight increase in his reflexes would be useless against Dave so long as Karkat lacked a decent weapon. And even then the other knight had a fully restored human body while Karkat had to subsist on short bursts of returned muscle mass from the bonfire.

As Dave returned to the fire to begin the process of storing his cleaning tools and donning his armor Karkat motioned for Kanaya to follow him out the newly opened door and out into the graveyard. As she caught up to him and they made their way up trail to what seemed to be the very summit of the mountain he questioned her about Dave.

"So what do you think of that walking shit can?"

"I think you and he will get along well. You two can bond over you shared distaste for proper language."

"Oh ha-fucking-ha. You just think your such a gods be damned comedian don't you? Seriously though what's your read on him."

"Well take in mind that I am in no way an expert on reading people though I suppose I can give you my opinion on him if you wish. I think he is very crude for a man of his supposed station, though so are you and you've been nice enough. He has given us no reason for us to distrust him and his skills and equipment have been useful. I guess he's okay, is what I'm trying to say here."

"Hm."

"Is there any reason in particular you're asking?"

"I've been thinking about getting off this mountain."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kanaya visibly cringe. He immeditaly stopped and turned to face her. "whoa, what's wrong?"

"I suppose this conversation was inevitable wasn't?"

"What conversation? What the fuck are you even talking about?"

"You're leaving, yes? I understand of course I could hardly expect someone like you to willingly waste away here in the asylum and it's not like I could come with you. Even if I could restore my body completely like Dave there's no way I'd ever make it off this mountain, not without falling the whole way down and I doubt even an undead could survive something like that I mean clearly we don't age and we won't starve but both you and Dave have killed several mad hollows so clearly we're not immortal."

Karkat stopped dead I his tracks, grabbing Kanaya's arm to stop her too and looking up at her with eyes she would've described as child-like had she not watched him kill hollows by stabbing them in the neck repedetly with a rusty piece of cloth wrapped metal not two hours ago.

"Hold up there Maryam, what are you saying? I'm not fucking leaving you here you flighty broad, so quit with that horse shit right this fucking instance! I'll give you fucking fitness training, I'll set up camps where you can rest along every flat surface I find on this ass biting mountain, I'll do something, but for the love of all those cocksucking, ass licking deities who've conspired to shit on everything I do, I fucking swear I'm not just going to leave you here on this gods forsaken mountain! What kind of heartless bastard do you think I am!?"

Few a few seconds all Karkat could do was stand there and try to catch his breath. Even with the minor restoration he'd gotten from his recent bonfire rest, he'd still apparently overestimated how long he could go without pausing to breathe.

For her part all Kanaya could do was raise the hairless, dried patches of brown skin that used to be her eyebrows as high up as they could go and struggle to respond. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was thankful that Karkat had worn himself out a little with that speech, it spared her from him seeing her repeadetly open and close her mouth like damned fish, starting to say something but halting right at the last second. How in the hell was she supposed to respond to this?

Glancing to her right she could see Dave still at the bonfire, struggling with his armor. Confident that she wasn't about to humiliate him she bent down slightly and gave him the smallest, lightest hug she could manage and muttered a quick "Thank you".

Pulling back she immediately felt embarrassed under Karkat's wide-eyed incredulous stare. He quickly turned his head however and muttered an embaressed "welcome". Kanaya smiled at that, happy that she hadn't been too presumptuous with her impromptu thank you hug.

Karkat just frowned harder, grateful that his alabaster skin had rotted far beyond the point where it could show a blush. He continued walking up the trail through the graveyard and towards what appeared to be the peak of the mountain, gesturing for Kanaya to follow. "C'mon Kanaya, lets see if we can spot any landmarks up there then head back and discuss this bullshit with Strider. Maybe he's got a half decent plan for getting off this bitch. Hell, maybe he want's company and he'll let us tag along?"

Karkat only said that out of some uncharacteristic optimism and a desire to keep Kanaya's spirits up. He highly doubted the Astoran would want to half hollows with him when he went down the mountain. Still, Kanaya seemed to be under the impression that it was a serious possibility and he saw no reason to burst her bubble.

"It wouldn't surprise me if he did want us along" she said. "You two do work well together."

"You can fuck right off with that notion Maryam!"

Kanaya just smiled, she was beginning to become accustomed to her companions pessimissim. Together they made their way up the trail, and somewhere below them in a hollowed crevice on the side of the mountain filled with the remains of trees scavenged from distant lands, woven into the shape of a nest, the great crow awoke from its slumber.

**ST: Currently in the process of editing previous chapters to make them slightly less of a hot mess. You also may have noticed no more typing quirks in dialogue. While editing it out of previous chapters is a long and tedious process I think it looks better. Anyone disgree? Not sure if i'll keep quirks that would show up in regular speech (wavy accent, fish puns, slight lisp) or not. We'll see. **

**Just one more chapter and the Asylum will finally be done. Thank you jesus.**


	8. The Death of Dave Strider

**ST: For anyone not familiar with Dark Souls, Catalyst=Magic Staff**

**The Death of Dave Strider **

Dave reached the graveyard just in time to watch a screaming Vantas, and maybe a screaming Maryam too, he couldn't make it out over Vantas' scratchy wails, get carried off by a giant crow. A giant fucking crow. Just out of nowhere, scoopin' them up like it ain't nothing and flying off into the gray clouded sky with the only two people he'd met in months that hadn't tried to kill or eat him. Fuck.

It wouldn't have been so disquieting had they been killed by say a hollow or a bandit- and of course they were as good as dead he's heard enough shitty kids stories to know what happens to people that get snatched up by giant birds- but to actually see them get snatched up by a giant fucking crow like that? What the hell kind of place was this where that was even a thing?

Had someone else been in his boots they would have probably mused philosophically on how randomly death can visit people, regardless of their character or actions. Dave merely stared into the sky, his mind blank with shock and a vague feeling of disturbed unease as he subconsciously repressed anything that might even come close to a depressive and useless epiphany on the nature of life and death. He instead compressed all of that into an uneasy and unsure "Well shit" and a growing list of ironic rants he could use to deflect both his own thoughts and the questioning of others from ever delving into this event, though at this point the latter ever occurring was looking pretty unlikely.

Shaking his head, he slowly turned and headed back into the demons room.

~)

He'd have to wait until tomorrow to travel back down the mountain. While the sun wasn't especially bright in the mountains, what with the constant cloud cover and all, it did provide some illumination. That light was fading fast however, and the clouds meant once the sun did fully set it would be pitch fucking black. The path up the mountain, while not the most well maintained road in the world, was still functional and if he went back down into the asylum and grabbed one of the torches he could probably make it tonight, but walking around as the only source of light on the mountain didn't sit well with him. Not with giant crows flying around.

At first Dave thought about tucking himself into one of the cells, or some small nook in one of the hallways, but then thought better of it. Clearly none of these cells were sturdy enough to hold the hollows and he didn't trust any of those short, tight passages to give him any time to react if a hollow stumbled across him while he slept.

Not for the first time since leaving Astora Dave found himself wishing John were there with him. Dave knew that, while far from the smartest man he'd ever known, John had a gift for being inventive and thinking on his feet. He'd probably have gathered up all the broken pieces of wood and metal scattered around the asylum and built a damn house by now. As it was however Dave had to resort to his own plan, plan B, in which B stands for badass plan that'll be perfectly fine and will totally work.

He gathered up some of the large urns from the demons room and circled them around the far corner away from the corpse and filled them with the heaviest junk armor and busted iron bars he could find. The way he figured, any hollows picking up his scent or whatever the fuck it is they do would have to make a shit ton of noise to move an urn that loaded down, if he could move it at all. The noise would wake Dave up; he'd kill the hollow, and then either go back to sleep, relocate, or keep vigil till sunrise. He'd figure out which when and if the time came.

It never occurred to Dave that the dead demon would attract hungry hollows. Never occurred to him that while his set up would fend off one or two, several dozen hollows would easily trap him in that corner and, without the leverage or room to move, he'd be chewed to death despite his newfound strength. Luckily for him as soon as he laid down and closed his eyes the floor beneath him caved in and he went tumbling down into the lower courtyard of the asylum.

While he'd never admit it, had that fall given him the time to scream he would've screamed as loud and long as he could. As it was he landed face first onto a small raised corner of the underground courtyard just a few feet below him. The air was knocked from his lungs and he was a little disoriented but he'd avoided the broken legs he would've surely received from the full fall.

His helmet was twisted at an uncomfortable angle, which had the added benefit of making him completely blind. He twisted his head around to right it, the thin openings on the faceplate giving him just enough space to see the pair of birdlike talons resting on the ground a few feet in front of him.

His eyes widened and his heartbeat pounded at his ears. He assumed it was another bird, less giant than the feathery asshole that snatched off Maryam and Vantas but still big enough to cave his skull in with its beak. There was no way he could rise and reach his sword either, not quickly enough, not with how close the damned thing was. And hell, that was assuming the broken blade hadn't gotten knocked off in the fall.

He stayed there on the ground, as still as he could, hoping the bird didn't see anything other than a pile of armor. It hadn't tried to peck at him yet though that was little comfort to Dave who had practically no armor covering his back. For those first few moments all he could was imagine what was surely a massive beak tearing through his back, crushing his lungs or heart or something else important. He wasn't sure it would kill him, but it would sure as hell keep him down long enough to be eaten. He doubted even an undead would survive that. Not that any undead would want to, now that he thought about it.

But as the seconds ticked by nothing happened. The initial shock of the fall and seeing the bird gradually wore off, and Dave started to wonder just what the fuck was going on here. Why wasn't this asshole doing anything? Better yet, why hadn't it flown the fuck off when the ceiling collapsed right in front of it? He was beginning to suspect that he'd done something very stupid and that there wasn't a bird in front of him at all, it was some weird ass statue or a figment of his scared awake mind. Then it spoke.

"Damn it get off the floor already you're making us look like an asshole."

It took Dave a second for his brain to register that, holy shit, that thing just talked. Confused and just a little freaked out, Dave tentatively raised his head to get a good look at this abomination. For what seemed like the hundredth time that day Dave was thankful for the faceplate covering his wide eyed, dumbstruck expression when he saw bird feet, bird feathers, bird wings, and disturbingly not entirely bird arms all connected to a mirror image of his own face. Or what would have been a mirror image, were it not for the creatures glowing hellfire red eyes.

"…hey."

"sup."

~)~)

"So what you're saying is you're me from the future?"

"No. I was you from the future right up until I came back here to the past and altered the timeline. I'm still you, and from the future, just a different you from a different future that may or may not still exist somewhere."

"Got it."

"Really?"

"Fuck no, but if there's anything that's too complicated for our awesome brains to waste their time thinking about it's that shit right there."

"My thoughts exactly. It's Rose's job to figure out all that technical bullshit. I'm the time and or dimensional travel guy, that's what I do. Uncovering the inner workings of reality wasn't in the job description. Granted neither was getting my insides turned into jelly but I seem to have managed that pretty well."

Dave's eyes drifted to puddle of blood collecting on the ground next to his doppelgangers side. After Dave had gotten over being a total bitch for what turned out to be no reason, if you counted you're bird-ified future self as being no reason to flip out, they'd both decided to sit down and talk. Quietly of course, there was another one of those fucking Demons sleeping against the wall at the opposite end of the courtyard. It was from the other Dave's struggle to get himself into a sitting position that Dave noticed the huge hole in his side, black blood barely visible against equally dark feathers.

"Yeah about that, you gonna be okay? That's a lot of blood. I've got some of that flame juice if you need it."

"Nah that shit doesn't work on me anymore. Part of being a badass bird demon. But yeah, no, this hole in my side hurts like a bitch but it's nothing you need to worry about. Like I said if Rose is right, and that snarky bitch is always right, then me being here means you'll turn into a different me. A me that doesn't get repeatedly fucked over by flighty broads."

"Cool. Who's Rose?"

" Some flighty broad. Actually she told me I wasn't even supposed to talk to you, something about space time continuity or some shit, but fuck that, I figured I'd give you the lowdown on anything you want to know about the immediate future."

" Sounds good, but maybe later. That fat bastard across the room is making me nervous. Any chance you could fly us outta here?"

"That's actually why I'm here. The plan was for me to ferry you to Firelink and save you from having to hike there yourself and being half a year late for everything like I was, though now that I'm here I'm thinking maybe I should kill that demon."

" Wait what?"

"Now I know that sounds dumb as hell I mean why would I give that bitch a fucking Demons soul but when you think about it shit makes perfect sense. She sucked up so many damn souls it probably won't give her any more of a power boost than she'd get with what I've got now, and TZ hasn't had any quality souls at all. It'd beef her all the hell up."

"How the fuck would you kill that thing? And what are you even talking about?"

"That's assuming she avenges me, which I'm sure she totally will. Hell, I'm pretty sure she was planning on killing Vriska anyway now that I think about it. Course that raises the question as to whether she even could. That's not to say I don't have mad faith in the girl, but at the same time it's not like she hasn't had her ass handed to her by that spiderwitch before.

"Oh gods is this what it's like when I start talking to myself? And you were getting on to me about being an embarrassment damn this is awful."

"Eh, fuck it. Whatever happens they'll figure out a way to deal with it. Those assholes need as many souls in circulation as they can get."

With that future Dave stood up and flexed out his wings, continuing to ignore his increasingly confused alternate past self.

~)~)~)

When the Stray Demon awoke it was to pain and darkness. Furiously it slapped its hands against where its eyes used to be, confused as to why it couldn't see and why its face hurt so badly, unaware that the pain that awoke it was from two clawed feet ripping out and crushing its eyes. The pain faded quickly though, as it did for all demons, and when it did the Stray Demon could sense something familiar in the room. Somewhere in the dark corners of the Demon's soul was the remnants man who remembered that power, the power that violated his very being, the power that turned him into what he sought to destroy.

Those faded corners of the demons soul had no sway with the Stray Demon itself though, who merely registered something to be destroyed. Rising to its feet the demon lifted its massive catalyst, carved from the bones of its fellow demons, and instinctively pooled the significant magic residing in its twisted soul into it, preparing to use what magic it knew to fill the room with fire.

Pain blossomed in its forehead before it could release the fire, and the surprised demon immediately dropped its catalyst and brought it hands to its head, intending to rip the bastard creature out and crush it, but before its hands could reach Dave a pillar of bright red fire erupted from its forehead, the force of the blaze knocking it on its back as it roared in pain and confusion. Despite the searing pain spreading through its head the demon tried in vain to bring its hands to its forehead and crush whatever was doing this.

The flames were too strong, the pain to great, even for a demon. And when the demon soul was drawn into the half undead abomination that killed it a long forgotten corner was, for a moment, able to reassert itself. That small portion, momentarily freed while the magic of the undead consumed the warped, demonic soul around it, was able to remember.

It remembered Izalith. It remembered charging hordes of demons, the former daughters of chaos, alongside its brothers. It remembered breaching the chamber of the Witch herself, expecting to die in battle against the rogue deity. Instead of the Witch it found a monster. The moment the knight laid eyes upon that twisted creature the flames of chaos entered his body and soul, warping him and his brothers into massive, corpulent demons. They entered that chamber knights in service to the great lord Gwyn, and left it as Demons of the false flame. They slaughtered men they'd sworn to fight and die beside for the next several years, up until the armies of the gods realized the truth of what was creating the Demons and finally managed to rout the horde, forcing most of them back into the ruins of Izalith. He and another were captured however and centuries later magically bound to two rooms of an undead asylum as part of a final, desperate plot by the waning gods.

And now the soul knew why the flame that was now killing it seemed so familiar; it was the same scorching fire that turned it into a demon in the first place. And then that unmolested corner of the demons soul was consumed as well, its fleeting consciousness destroyed as it was forcibly merged with the soul of its killer.

~)~)~)~)

Dave was impressed when his feathery look alike flew up to the sleeping demon and yanked out both its eyes with his freaky bird feet. He was shocked when, rather than circling the massive beast and inflicting small wounds he dive bombed straight into the Demon's face, thrusting both hands into the creature's very flesh. And he was knocked on his fucking ass when his doppelganger channeled a pillar of the reddest fire Dave had ever seen through his body and straight into the Demon's head.

The flame shot out the back of the demons head and appeared for a moment like a great blade, before the demons skull charred and broke into ash along with most of its upper body. Dave remained airborne, his wings beating furiously to keep him balanced as the force of the fire tried to launch him upwards. Slowly he began to pivot in the air, dragging his channeled flame downwards until the entirety of the demons body was reduced to nothing but ash.

Once the whole Demon was incinerated Dave began slowing his wings, the flames pushing him upwards slightly, so as not to launch himself into the ground. Finally, he ceased channeling the fire and fell to the ground, scattering a small cloud of ash as he landed. Shaking himself, dusting the remains of the Demon from his feathers except for where it clung to the blood covering his side, he experimentally flexed his wings.

He was feeling weaker already. Whatever fucked up inhuman organs that bitch's barbed up devil sword tore into apparently really were important because he did not feel right at all. His wings felt like they were moving through water and the tips of his hands and feet were going numb. He quickly beat his wings back and forth, working that weird languid feeling out of them before extending them out all the way. Looking up at his confused and awed past self his beat down his wings and left the ground, beginning the last flight he'd ever make.

~)~)~)~)~)

When Dave finally hit the ground he registered two things. One: He was on the ground. And two: He was back on the fucking ground! Finally!

He'd been grabbed up and carried off by his future self pretty much immediately after the Demon was dead. He'd yelled and struggled and cursed at first, but once they got above the clouds Dave figured he'd best shut up and just settle in for the flight. And gods damn was it a flight, he couldn't even begin to wonder about how long they were up in the air, moving at speeds just under what Dave imagined was the "wind tearing you damn skin off" limit. Long enough for that bastards fucking bird feet to wear a couple of holes in his shoulders at least. And what time he didn't spend wondering what the fuck was happening was spent being piss in your pants terrified at the wet hacking coughs and the tremors wracking his future self's body. A fall from that height was another thing he wasn't certain an undead could come back from.

They'd landed, and calling that shit a landing was being pretty generous, near some ruined buildings near the peak of the most massive city Dave had ever seen. He wished he'd gotten a better look at it before his face got well acquainted with the ground. All the same, the feathery asshole had had the decency to drop them right next to a bonfire, so those holes the bastard dug in his shoulders were finally healing. Shame the fire couldn't fix the holes those talons had torn in the armor too. He was low enough at that as it was.

He gave the bonfire a minute to work its magic before pushing himself up and looking around. They were at the base of a small grassy hill, the massive city behind him and far below. Ahead of him were what looked to be the remains of small walls and, further on up, some sort of large, ruined building. He wasn't sure what any of this used to be , though from the overgrown vines and grasses he could tell that it hadn't been anything but ruins for a long while.

He saw something black at the edge of his vision. He looked down to his right and saw that it was the crumpled body of that bird bastard. Maybe Dave could get some damn answers now that the kidnapping son of a bitch wasn't hacking up his lungs, courtesy of magic fire.

At least that was what Dave thought, right up until he shoved his future self over with his boot, trying to get him up and talking. Once he'd rolled right side up, the Dave standing up noticed with growing horror that the Dave lying on the ground was completely limp, still, with eyes wide open and blood coming out of everywhere.

"…oh fuck."


	9. Riding in Far From a Foreign Land

**Riding in Far From a Foreign Land**

The hollow wasn't particularly strong, but the iron chest plate it wore was heavy and Eridan had no leverage to throw it off. The mind numbing fear of being jumped by the hollow just when he'd thought himself safe was replaced with a feverish desperation to keep the glowing eyed, corpse-like monsters mashing teeth away from his neck. His arm was trapped awkwardly between them and all he could do was keep his wrist pressed against its neck, stopping it from tearing his throat out but incapable of pushing it back.

He tried to physically recoil into the floor he was trapped against, his pounding heart drowning out every thought. The pounding came to a head when the end of a spear burst from the hollows face. Black blood splattered over Eridan's face, and it took every ounce of self-control he possessed not to mewl outright in fear and disgust. Suddenly the weight was lifted from his chest and smooth hands were wiping the gore away from his face.

"Oh gods, Eridan are you alright?"

"Yeah Fef, just sh-shaken is all."

"Oh my god Eridan I thought you were about to…"

Feferi visibly cringed downward towards Eridan and covered her mouth with her hands as a cacophony of shuffling noises sounds out from the door not five feet away, faint shadows seeping in from the overcast twilight sky. Suddenly he remembered why he'd dragged Feferi, who'd been intent on continuing the search for that filthy peasant Sollux, into the first dilapidated house he could find. The encroaching horde of hollowed undead, one of several that seemed to continually wander the lower burgs of Lordran.

Feferi lowered herself and lay next to Eridan, one hand clutching her scavenged spear and the other nervously stroking her talisman while Eridan internally berated himself on his choice of weapon. While he was brilliant with the rapier, always his weapon of choice, merely piercing vital organs was simply not enough to keep down an undead for long. He'd realized this not long after they'd entered the gods' forsaken city, two years and one exile too late.

Still, he reached down and loosened the strap around his sheath, not willing to actually draw the blade and make any more noise than they'd already made. Or to dislodge Feferi from her place against his arm. Finally calming down, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the floorboards, absently stoking Feferi's arm in an attempt to comfort his terrified charge. In retrospect he realized he should have checked when they'd entered the house to see if it was occupied. He'd been so terrified of Feferi's refusal to take cover from the encroaching swarm, and so enraged that the reason for her endangering herself was that lowly bastard. That said bastard wasn't there to witness his terror at being attacked so unexpectedly was a small consolation.

Internally sighing, knowing that the first thing she'll want to do once the horde passed would be to look for fucking Sollux, Eridan adjusted as slowly and quietly as he could in a futile effort to get comfortable on the cold floor. Judging from the sounds of the footsteps outside it would be a long wait.

~)

Sollux rammed the spear tip of his halberd straight into the stomach of the hollow, pinning the flailing undead against the wall. He could hear the grunts and moans of the other undead closing in around him and attempted to pull his halberd from the hollows stomach. The hollow held fast to the weapon however and after a short struggle Sollux took one hand off the halberds shaft and pulled his talisman from its strap on his waist, snapping the chord in his rush. Gripping it tightly he recited the tale of Force in the most abbreviated form he could manage, rushing over his words and splitting his concentration between suppressing his lisp, which would interfere with the casting of the miracle, and the struggling undead trying to pull his weapon away from him.

He grunted as he felt a blade pierce his shoulder, just as he finished the incantation. The delay between incanting and casting was short though, and before the undead could plunge the blade through his arm a sphere of energy shot out from around his talisman, knocking the undead surrounding him down and blasting the hollow he had pinned even further against the wall.

Seeing his opening Sollux ripped his halberd from the stunned hollow and whirled around, using the axe-head of his weapon to disembowel and behead the hollows behind him. He turned again just as the hollow he'd pressed against the wall gathered itself and lunged forward at him. He rammed it back into the wall with the spear point, quickly withdrawing it before thrusting back into the hollow's chest twice more. Finally the hollow ceased struggling and crumpled to the floor, dead.

He and his companions learned not long after crossing the northern mountains that no single mortal wound short of beheading, bisecting, or severe disemboweling would really kill an undead. There were several hollows wandering the countryside just outside the city with rapier size holes through their hearts now as a testament to this trait, as well as a testament Eridan's stubbornness, the pompous bastard. Sollux however had deduced from watching that ass try to combat hollows, along with his own infinitely more effective and badass experiences fighting the things, that while piercing the heart didn't do much good mashing it and the rest of the chest cavity into a bloody, perforated pulp was pretty damn effective.

As he shook the gore from his weapon a short wave of dizziness hit him, his body's way of telling him that he wouldn't be able to cast many more miracles without rest. Long used to the sensation he held his ground and his grip on both his weapon and talisman. Once it passed, as if to spite his body's limit, he knelt down and began to incant the story of Heal, slower this time. He could feel the hole in his shoulder begin to tingle and the pain start to numb when the world exploded.

A thunderous noise broke out behind him. He turned to see the wall on the other end of the small plaza he'd found himself in crack and shatter all along its length. A second boom sounded out the ancient stone wall crumbled, and overtop the rubble walked the largest man Sollux had ever seen.

The stranger was nearly twice as tall as Sollux, and almost as wide, wearing huge, thick black armor and wielding a bladed mace. And any question Sollux may have had about the strangers sanity was answered when it let out a deep, rumbling roar before limping towards him, its mace held high. Taking note of the hollowed knights limp Sollux quickly changed his incantation to the longer but more useful tale of Replenish.

The knight was barely halfway across the courtyard when Sollux cast his miracle, and rather than waiting for the slow acting regenerative miracle to repair his arm he immediately hefted up his halberd and charged. The hollow knight swung downwards when Sollux came into range, and while he did manage to side step it at the last minute the force of the blow shook the stone ground to bits and rattled Sollux's teeth. He paled at the thought of a blow like that connecting. There was only so much Replenish could heal.

Before the knight could even lift his mace from the ground Sollux sidestepped again, putting himself as far from the knights mace as he could while still keeping the bastard in range of his halberd, and put all his weight into a thrust with the spearhead straight into the hollowed knights wounded leg. It bounced harmlessly off to the side. Sollux spun with the momentum and struck the knights leg again with the axe blade. It too was deflected away by the knight's thick armor.

Said knight, paying no mind to the soft plinks of Sollux's weapon striking its armor, laboriously pulled its mace back up and lunged to its side with a horizontal swipe the Sollux was barely able to back step away from. It too rolled with its momentum and spun with the force its swing, bringing its weapon across the stone floor in and upwards swipe. Sollux anticipated that move from watching the knight's leg distribute its weight. He did not anticipate the bits of stone brick flying into his face, ripped from the ground as the knight drug his mace across it.

His attempt to sidestep was interrupted when a brick crashed into his eye, half blinding him. The pain in his eye was soon dwarfed however by an explosion of fiery agony in his injured arm. And then there was nothing but darkness.

~)~)

When Sollux came to a few seconds later he was lying on his back, his arm in gory tatters above his elbow and barely connected to his torso, the pain withstandable only through the mild numbing effects of the still active Replenish, which was slowly trying to repair his maimed arm. And, of course, the knight was standing right over him, its mace raised over its head and ready to strike. He wondered if his last thoughts would be of Feferi, or of Thorolund and the church, the land he'd called home, before realizing he was being a dumbass and wasting his time for last thoughts thinking about what his last thoughts should be.

A barbed whip shot out from behind the knight, wrapping tightly around its neck. The knight dropped its mace to the ground and grabbed at the whip with both hands. Sollux watched wide eyed as the knight struggled to pull the whip free from its neck only to be forced into leaning backwards itself.

Just when the knight seemed to be gaining back some ground the wielder of the whip appeared in Sollux's vision, shooting through the air in a blur of red and black, using the tension in their whip to launch into a mid-air kick straight into the knights head. The knight's helmet flew off, and the knight itself fell to the ground.

The knight's assailant landed next to Sollux. It was a female, wearing strange, soft looking but tight fitting black clothing. A strip of cloth covered most of her face; the only visibly features being ruddy brown eyes and long, wild black hair. She knelt down and pulled Sollux into a sitting position.

"Now hold still, we'll probably have to cut off this arm but you should be…okay?"

Sollux followed her gaze to his injured arm, which was slowly but visibly healing through the lingering effects of Replenish. An annoyed Sollux was about to explain that yes, that was indeed happening and there was no need for her to stare gaping like an idiot when he saw movement over her shoulder.

"Fuck!" was all he could say before attempting to grab her and roll out of the way of the knight's lunge. To his surprise however she pulled him instead and _fucking back-flipped _to avoid it, flinging him awkwardly through the air in the opposite direction.

By some miracle he landed on his feet, the knight between himself and the mystery asshole who'd saved him. His Halberd lost, he pulled an old bronze dagger from his side bag, usually a worthless weapon but more effective than just his fists. He readied himself and, when the knight when for the obviously greater threat presented by the newcomer, dashed in.

He'd intended to distract the knight to that the stranger could land a critical blow, and so was surprised when the knight recoiled in pain when struck by Sollux's dagger, despite the knight's armor remaining unscratched. Apparently whatever blessing was given to that relic still had some effect. Still, the dagger seemed to frustrate the knight more than anything else, the same going for his ally's barbed whip. It became clear to Sollux that there was no way for them to win this fight.

Dodging another swing of the mace, Sollux took advantage of the time the knight took to pull its weapon from the ground to communicate to his partner.

"Hey numbnuts, this guy's gonna kick our asses if we keep this up! We need to get the hell out of here!"

"What are you talking about? We can take him! You just need to…"

She was interrupted by the knights tossed mace embedding itself in her chest. Sollux cursed and run towards her, sliding under the armored fist of the knight. There was light in her eyes, though blood dripped from her mouth as she tried to speak. Sollux cursed again before using all his strength to pull the knights mace from her chest, eliciting a weak shriek from her. Unwilling to look and what was likely a fatal wound and not having the time to heal it for her anyway, Sollux hefted her up on his shoulders and made a mad dash for the hole in the wall the knight came through. He was intimately aware of how much worse carrying her was making her wound, his back already becoming moist be her blood, but what else could he do? There was at least a chance he could cast a miracle on her if he could at least get her away from the knight.

He could hear the pounding of the knight's metal boots against the ground and even with its limp he knew he was barely outrunning it, the exhaustion of the fight combined with the extra weight on his shoulders taking a considerable toll.

As he struggled through the alleyway the hole led into he looked around desperately for some way to lose the knight quickly. A long chase would inevitably attract swarms of hollows. Unfortunately all he could see were decrepit houses and maze like streets, nothing the following knight couldn't navigate or break through. He'd have to get creative.

~)~)~)

Sitting up against an earthen wall, an undetermined distance underground, Sollux halfheartedly mused over how his creative plan went to shit. Instead of trapping the knight in the below ground basement of one of the burgs houses he'd ended up trapping himself. If he hadn't discovered the tunnel leading into the ground from the basement he'd have been slaughtered by that damned knight. He'd survived by luck, not skill, and though he'd never admit it he couldn't help but feel ashamed about that.

The tunnel eventually led him to a small underground chamber, more like a mine really, the walls and ceiling being nothing but dirt supported by wooden beams. All around the chamber were other tunnels similar to the one's Sollux found. Hopefully one of those would lead to a way out. That would be for later though, because right in the center of the room sat something Sollux had only heard about in whispered conversations and in the brief mentions of the holy texts. The whole reason they'd been sent to the ancient city in the first place; a bonfire.

At first he just stood there, mesmerized by the slow flame moving about the old rusted sword planted in a pile of ashes. He came to his senses when he remembered the injured girl he'd half dragged through the tunnels and immediately leaned her up against the wall, one hand going for his talisman and the other for her pulse. He cursed when he realized he'd lost his talisman along the way, though for the moment it didn't seem like it was going to matter. The girl was dead.

Sighing, he lowered his head in regret and mouthed out what funeral rites he knew. It wasn't much but, undead or no, she saved him. It was the least he could do. Just as he was getting ready to push her body back down the tunnel he'd come through, not wanting to have her corpse stinking up the central chamber, the bonfire made a loud crackling noise. He turned to see the flames themselves leaning over and collecting into a single mass off to the side, coalescing into some sort of shape. After a moment it became clear to Sollux what the shape was. It was a body. And it was beginning to stir.


	10. Fireside Chats

**Fireside Chats **

Sollux lunged at the figure rising from the bonfire, only to be flipped and thrown on his ass. He quickly tried to get back on his feet, but a swift quick in the face had him back on the ground, the weight of a heel on his throat giving him plenty of incentive to stay that way.

"Please just stay down. Give me a minute and I think I can explain everything" said the figure. From what Sollux could see it was a heavily decayed undead female, though apparently not totally hollow. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

She turned her gaze from Sollux and looked around the room, giving a small start when she noticed the corpse of Sollux's late rescuer near the tunnel he intended to leave it in. "Oh! You brought it here. That's great, hunting those things down is usually such a pain!" The pressure on Sollux's neck disappeared as the newcomer made her way over to the corpse.

"Hey, get the fuck away from…that?" Sollux trailed off as the stranger casually knelt down and stuck her finger into the pool of blood amassing around the dead body. A green shimmer flashed overtop the pool of blood, followed immediately by a short roar from the bonfire. As she rose back to her feet her body was already rapidly repairing itself.

"Much better" she said, turning back to Sollux with a satisfied grin. Her expression quickly became confused however when she saw Sollux's vacant stare. Following his eyes, she quickly realized her now fully restored body was stark naked.

She knelt down, grabbed a small stone, chucked it at Sollux's head, and immediately turned and began removing the clothes from the corpse, muttering curses under her breath.

~)

"Wait, so then every hollow I kill is just going to reform at a bonfire somewhere?" Sollux asked.

"No, for whatever reason when hollowed undead die they die for good. I've met a few people who have some pretty interesting theories about that, but no one really knows why. No one knows why the bonfires do any of the things they do actually. Like that little trick with my humanity you saw there."

"Are you talking about your body reforming? What was up with that, and what does humanity have to do with it."

The girl sitting across from chuckled. "Wow, so this is how it feels to be the one explaining all this. Okay, if you approach a bonfire with absorbed humanity the bonfire will absorb that humanity and restore your body. What you saw was me retrieving absorbed humanity from my dead body. It's very important you remember that; any souls or humanity you have on you will be lost when you die, but if you can find your body, or some blood from your body, or even a bloodstain, you can reabsorb it."

Sollux nodded, his mind working over all the implications of what she'd just told him.

"Huh. You're taking all this in a lot better than I did. That's good though! The faster you learn bonfire mechanics the easier your trip to the upper sections of the city will be."

Sollux gave a small start at this. "How do you know where I'm going?"

"Because that's where everyone is going. Or at least that's where they were headed before they went hollow."

"I guess so. Now that all that's answered do you mind telling me who the fuck you are?"

"My name's Aradia Megido."

"Sollux Captor. You must be from Carim."

"Uh, yeah. Is that a problem?"

"Fuck no. The hordes of angry undead shuffling their dead asses all over this fucking city are the problem. Prejudices based on a bunch of dead assholes being assholes are hard to keep around here."

"Ha, yeah, it is strange how coming to this land can shift your priorities so drastically."

Rising from the ground, Aradia moved over to sit next to Sollux. "So, since we're both headed to the same place I thought we should team up. I've been to the upper levels before actually, so having me around would make the trip a lot easier."

A part of Sollux seriously considered her offer. She was clearly an extremely competent fighter, and she seemed to know a lot more about the city than he did. But he had a suspicion her story might be bullshit. Something about her outfit was familiar to him, like he'd seen a picture of it while skimming through a book years ago and he couldn't shake the unnerved feeling it was giving him. Besides, she could be dangerous. Just because she saved him today doesn't mean she wouldn't try to knife him in the back tomorrow. Which would still be worth the risk probably, if not would only be the two of them, but he needed to find Feferi and Eridan before continuing up. He wasn't willing to put Feferi in anymore potential danger than she already was in.

"I work better alone."

"Fine. Your choice I suppose. You're going to need this though, if you're planning to go it alone." She went back over to her pouch and pulled out what appeared to be a small black stone. "You have any idea what this is?"

Sollux shook his head no.

"It's called Titanite. It's a very special material only found in this land. If, by some miracle, you manage to make it to the upper levels of the city you should eventually come across an parish. Near the church in that parish in a blacksmith. Give him this and tell him it's from Aradia and he should help you out."

Sollux accepted the small stone and put it in his own pack. "Thanks."

"No problem."

~)~)

A few hours later Aradia sat and watched the fitfully sleeping cleric. They'd agreed to rest a little before attempting to find a way out of the tunnel network, Aradia being fully aware that his heavy miracle had left him exhausted. She gambled on him passing out once he cooled down a little, and she' been right.

She knew deep down that the most practical thing to do would be to kill him. The meager souls he'd collected from the weakling hollows he'd killed had surely been used up after this much time spent in the presence of a bonfire, but his humanity. Oh, his humanity. Not only was he a Cleric, in and of itself a rare catch, but he was showing almost no symptoms of decomposition. Even if he wasn't a Thorolund Cleric, the absolute closest hamlet was a good year's journey away. To be so well put together after so long suggested a vast store of humanity within his chest.

She drew a small dagger from the hollowed out handle of her whip. Laborers had hammers, farmers had plows, and scholars had books. She had a blade. That was the tool of her trade, and an effective tool it was. One quick swipe through his throat and that would be it. Not painless, but quick. A hell of a lot quicker than her recent death at any rate.

It's not like death would mean much to him now anyway, she thought. He wouldn't lose any souls after all, and clearly he had far more humanity than he knew what to do with. Hell, she'd probably be doing him a favor getting his first death out of the way like this. The first one was always the most traumatic, and she could make his efficient and clean. She'd spare him from the horror brought on by the illusion of mortality during those last few moments as you lay bleeding on the ground, crushed, burnt, or in pieces, if not worse.

Aradia sighed, not sure if she should be ashamed that this is what she's becoming or ashamed that she's struggling with it so much. Leaning back against the earthen wall she studied the blade in her hand as a war raged within her conscience.

~)~)~)

Dave eyes moved from the body of a significantly more feathery version of himself to the ground between his feet as bright purple lettering slowly appeared atop the grass and stone. "If you're quite done staring at the corpse of my dearly departed compatriot, perhaps you could manage to root around near the base of that tree? You'd likely find what will by now be a…"

"Old ass box with a glowing magic stone in it. Got it right here."

"…Hm. It seems bad manners truly are a universal trait of all Dave Striders. And here I was thinking that was hyperbole."

"What?"

"You'll need to be more specific."

"Dave Striders, as in plural? Also how do you know my name, who are you, and how are we talking like this. Also why is there a bird version of me? And where am I, I guess."

"That all?"

"Yeah pretty much."

"Good. Unfortunately I can answer none of your questions at this moment due to some pretty severe time constraints. What I can tell you is that our interests are heavily aligned at the current moment despite your laughable ignorance in regards to literally everything going on right now . If trust is indeed something you are capable of bestowing upon people then please, I beg of you, trust me. I'll explain everything later, you have my word."

"Yeah fuck you. You're essentially just magic writing on the ground to me, you realize this right?"

"Yes I anticipated such a response. It was inevitable, just as you following my instructions is inevitable."

"No fuck you."

"Such eloquence! Now, somewhere behind you is a staircase leading down to an elevator. That elevator will take you right where you need to be. Trust me."


End file.
